"No, you!"
"No, YOU!"
Original airdate: October 15th, 2015
Production code: 1031-074
The Crystal Gems and Peridot are still at the barn, working on the plans for the drill machine to stop the Cluster. More accurately, Pearl is working on the blueprints. Peridot is petulantly dictating notes and logs into a tiny handheld tape recorder. But things are slowly coming along. Unfortunately, Peridot's clinging to the ways of Homeworld are agitating the other Gems.
She remarks on Pearl's singing and crying. She asks Garnet to unfuse, and Garnet responds by leashing her to the fence. Amethyst, however, finds Peridot amusing, given her overly-scientific terminology for tools and things around her. She asks the Homeworld Gem to name body parts, pointing to them:
Getting back to the project at hand, the Gems have decided they're nearly ready but they need a drill head. Peridot suggests going back to the Kindergarten and using an injector drill head. Garnet says Peridot is not permitted to return to the Kindergarten without a chaperone. Amethyst and Steven go along.
Amethyst teases Peridot for being a nerd while they seek out an appropriate drill head. Peridot likes the newer ones for being prettier with a finer finish but ultimately decides on an older one. Amethyst entertains herself by egging Peridot on to rant about Garnet (the Permafusion), Pearl, and Steven (some kind of hybrid abomination), until she embarrasses Steven into demanding Peridot find something else to talk about. Peridot tells Amethyst that she doesn't understand why she listens to Garnet and Pearl, given Homeworld methodology, she as a Quartz, outranks them both and should be a powerful soldier. Amethyst is bemused and intrigued at the idea of being in charge, encouraging Peridot to go on. Peridot does, but in her methodical, scientific, insensitive way, doesn't know when to stop. She finds Amethyst's hole and tells her she came out too late, which is why she's so small; as a Quartz, she should have been huge, tall and intimidating, but she's small and defective. Amethyst grows sullen and silent, but obediently uses her whip to cut the drill head off when Peridot asks and they return to the barn.
Peridot seems confused at Amethyst's sudden change of attitude toward her. She tells Steven she was being cool and that Amethyst loved it. Steven tells Peridot that Peridot is mistaken; she's hurt Amethyst's feelings, and that's why the purple Gem is behaving so coldly toward the green gem. He asks Peridot how it makes her feel to know that.
To get away from feeling bad that she's hurt Amethyst, Peridot gets into the cockpit of the drill machine and begins tinkering with the control panel. But she accidentally starts it up. It begins whirling willy-nilly all over the yard, throwing Peridot off and causing her leash to get caught on a rock. Steven jumps into action to disable the drill.
Meanwhile, a sullen Amethyst wanders into the scene. Seeing her in danger, Peridot manages to snap her leash and knock Amethyst to safety. Steven finally yanks the control panel out, stopping the drill, which slows, stops, and falls over.
A little while later, Peridot approaches and tries to talk to Amethyst, who is only slightly more kindly disposed to her due to having been saved from the drill. But Peridot can't make the words come and resorts to the recorder again. As usual, the recording starts with more insults about the Gems, but eventually turns inward on Peridot who admits to failing her mission, and has turned to working with the enemy — and is failing with that too because she has hurt someone she didn't mean to. She doesn't understand how or why, but she wants to. And is sorry.
Amethyst accepts the apology, declares Peridot still a nerd, and walks off, obviously feeling better. Steven and Peridot watch her go. Steven asks Peridot how she feels now that she's apologized.
Tropes:
- An Aesop: It's important to recognize when jokes that you make at other people's expense do more harm then good, even if you still find them funny.
- Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Peridot doesn't like when Pearl randomly sings, or cries, or sings while crying.
- Brick Joke:
- Pearl jokingly suggested putting Peridot on a leash in "Catch and Release", then started seriously considering it. After asking Garnet to unfuse, Peridot is tethered to a fence, and spends most of the episode still wearing the harness.
- When Amethyst asks what Peridot would describe a foot as, she labels it a "gravity connector." After Steven calls Peridot out on her behavior towards Amethyst at the kindergarten, Peridot dismisses the Gems as clods beneath her gravity connectors.
- Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": Peridot has excessively complicated terms for tools and body parts. To her, a screwdriver is a "leverage optimizer", a nose is a "scent sponge", an eye is a "vision sphere", fingers are "touch stumps", legs are "gravity connectors", and your butt is "your butt".
- Call-Back:
- Peridot suggests salvaging a drill head from one of the Injectors at the Kindergarten.
- In "Back to the Barn", Peridot mentioned that she's a certified Kindergartener, here she mentions how the newer Injector models look cooler.
- Back in "The Return", Jasper referred to Amethyst as an "overcooked runt". In this episode, Peridot explains that Amethyst hatched 500 years after the war instead of during it as she was supposed to. Had she hatched normally, she would have looked almost exactly like Jasper. She also calls attention to Amethyst's hole, which last appeared in "On The Run", from which she is able to determine that Amethyst hatched late.
- Peridot references Homeworld's vision of fusion, as well as her calling Garnet a "filthy war machine" when she expresses her confusion about why Garnet stays fused even out of combat.
- Peridot's back to making logs, this time using a tape recorder Steven gave her to make up for Amethyst trashing her limb enhancers.
- Peridot already used the term "touch stumps" when Steven grabbed her leg in "Friend Ship" ("Get your touch-stumps off me, you Steven!").
- The Comically Serious:
- Garnet is in fine form this episode, from tying Peridot up to saying that she blames the cows at the end.
- Peridot is this as usual, only she accidentally goes too far and hurts Amethyst.
- Culture Clash: Fusion on Homeworld is thought of as just a means to an end while fighting, so Peridot finds Garnet's constant state of fusion confusing and disturbing. Garnet, in turn, is filled with barely suppressed rage at the idea of fusion being something of offense.
- Cutting the Knot: Instead of going to the trouble of making a new drill head, Peridot suggests getting one from an Injector in the Kindergarten.Pearl: To think we'd be using the same technology that started all this to fix it! This drill is pure irony!
Peridot: Actually, it's mostly carbonite.
Steven: Would that make it...carbony? - Does This Remind You of Anything?:
- Peridot telling Garnet to unfuse because it makes her uncomfortable is clearly a strike against LGBT people being told to "tone down their gayness" for doing things as innocuous as holding hands or kissing in public.
Garnet: Her having free reign of the place made me incredibly uncomfortable.- Peridot calling Amethyst "defective" in a literal sense, saying that she's surprisingly powerful despite not being a "normal" Quartz (and Amethyst clearly being offended), parallels the short-sighted comments disabled or autistic people often hear about not being "technically normal."
Peridot: See! Look at that! You can do everything a normal Quartz can do! - Dude, Not Funny!: In-Universe. Peridot gets on everyone's bad side by joking about sensitive topics, and Steven has to spell it out that it isn't funny. She does apologize at the end of the episode.
- Expospeak Gag: Peridot has strange technical terms for everything (noses are "scent sponges", feet are "gravity connectors", and so on). Amethyst thinks they're funny and delights in making Peridot say them.
- Fantastic Racism: Crops up with Peridot for the second time in a row, this time towards fusion, asking Garnet to defuse while they work so she doesn't have to look at her. This time it gets her tied to a fence for her troubles.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: Amethyst calls Peridot a nerd, but the insult falls flat because she doesn't know what that word means.
- Hive Caste System: This pops up again, with Peridot believing that since Amethyst is not only the only Gem in the Crystal Gems who's actually a Gem (discounting Pearl because she's a Pearl, Garnet because she's a perma-fusion, and Steven because he's a Half-Human Hybrid), she's also a Quartz, made to be a powerful warrior, she should be the one leading them, despite being defective.
- Humans Through Alien Eyes: Peridot find Steven's bodily functions quite disgusting.Peridot: His organic half consumes so much energy that he has to constantly feed, and he spends so much time expelling, that he has a whole room dedicated to it!
- Humble Pie: Peridot plays Amethyst a pre-recorded message where she apologizes for hurting her feelings and admits she's not as smart as she would like to believe.
- Hypocrite: Amethyst doesn't have a problem with Peridot roasting her friends until she starts "joking" about Amethyst herself.
- Innocent Innuendo: Peridot describes Garnet with a somewhat sexually suggestive hand gesture, but given gems have No Biological Sex and she's massively ignorant of organic life, it was probably an accident on her part. That's probably why Amethyst (who likely does know about those things) finds it so funny.
- Innocently Insensitive: Peridot didn't mean to hurt Amethyst's feelings by describing her as defective—far from it; she's actually sucking up to her—she just didn't realize that what she was saying was actually wrong and offensive.
- "Just Joking" Justification: Played with; Peridot actually did think she was just joking when she made an Expospeak Gag of Amethyst's height, since up until then Amethyst found her mockery of the other Crystal Gems funny, and becomes honestly confused and frustrated when Steven calls her out. She eventually gets it and apologizes.
- Large and in Charge: Peridot invokes this when she says that Amethyst should be higher ranked in the Gem hierarchy than Garnet or Pearl, based off her being a Quartz Gem (albeit a "defective" one), and that Amethyst should be twice her size if she had come out on time.
- Literal-Minded:
- When Peridot says "butt", Steven and Amethyst completely crack up, with Steven telling Peridot that she's "killing him". She fiercely denies it, as it would violate the Enemy Mine situation they have. Amethyst then clarifies that they find her funny.
- Peridot makes a joke Amethyst found funny, she said that Peridot was a "real gem" (as in, she's funny). Peridot took it to mean that she was saying that she's a Gem.
- Pearl shows utter enthusiasm at the prospect of using Kindergarten tech to stop The Cluster, saying that it's "pure irony". Peridot states that the drill is mostly made of carbonite.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Until Peridot told her, Amethyst had no idea she was meant to be a powerful and intimidating warrior like Jasper, even though Garnet and Pearl probably knew this from their familiarity with Homeworld.
- No Sense of Humor: Peridot doesn't get why Amethyst thinks she's funny and didn't seem to really understand what humor was at first. She quickly joins in and starts making her own jokes, but don't get what the limits of humor are.
- No Social Skills: Peridot has no idea that what she's saying to Amethyst is offensive until Steven outright spells it out to her, and even then she has trouble apologizing. Part of this seems to be lack of practice socializing with other Gems.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Peridot never retracts any of the derogatory statements about the Crystal Gems. Instead she admits that, in becoming a traitor to Homeworld but also failing to coexist with the Crystal Gems, she herself is just as much of a failure as any of them are.
- Not So Above It All: This isn’t just an episode about Peridot reforming a relationship with Amethyst, it’s about Peridot learning the hard way that she isn’t hot shit.Peridot: Log Date 7-1-1-2. This entire planet is backwards. There hasn’t been one instance of correct behavior exhibited by any one of these Crystal Gems. I have concluded that they are all defective. But I am no better. I failed my mission and now I’m working with the enemy, and I can’t even get that right… I’m still learning. I hope [Amethyst] understand[s]. I want to understand. I’m sorry.
- Note to Self: Steven gives Peridot a tape recorder to replace her lost screen, which she uses extensively.
- Pet the Dog: While the last two episodes are spent on Peridot losing some of her antagonism towards Steven and the gems, this episode confirms her being nicer than she lets on when she breaks free of her leash to save Amethyst from a giant drill.
- Pun: After Steven stops the drill from going out of control:Steven: It's okay! Everything's okay! It was just a drill.
- The Reveal: Amethyst is "defective" because she stayed in the ground too long, and she would have looked much larger and more intimidating if she had come out on time. Jasper and Amethyst's odd similarities are because they are both varieties of quartz. Peridot implies that Amethyst, if "properly" hatched, would look a lot like a purple version of Jasper.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Peridot uses terms like "leverage optimizer" and "scent sponge" for a screwdriver and nose, respectively.
- Sherlock Scan: Peridot is able to deduce the details of Amethyst's birth from nothing but her stature and the hole she was born from in the Kindergarten. She is a "certified Kindergartner", after all.
- Ship Tease: Peridot and Amethyst. The latter can't stop laughing at pretty much anything the former says, the former genuinely apologizes once she realizes she's hurt the latter, and both share a long, awkward moment as Peridot is on top of Amethyst, complete with a Held Gaze. Also note the stars in Amethyst's eyes when she's around Peridot early on, not too dissimilar from those in Rose's back when she was courting Greg.
- Special Edition Title: Instead of the episode title card being giant hand of the temple and Steven's laundry, it's the fence of the barn and Steven's laundry because Team Universe is there to assemble the drill. That design persisted until the drill was complete, and the Crystal Gems moved back to the temple.
- Suggestive Collision: Peridot falls onto Amethyst's lap knees-first. Although quite tame, the latter is too dumbfounded to properly react, and the former is very flustered.
- Tsundere: Peridot can't even bring herself to apologize to Amethyst face to face and has to use her tape recorder to present it.
- Visual Innuendo: When Peridot talks about how Garnet is fused 24/7, she can't find the right words to express what Ruby and Sapphire are doing when they're not in battle, so she bumps the top sides of her fists together to demonstrate. Amethyst cracks up, while the implication goes over Steven's head.
- Visual Pun: When Peridot says she feels 'Big' at the end, she appears larger than Steven because of the perspective.
- What Is This Feeling?: When Peridot starts feeling bad after realizing she's hurt Amethyst, the best way she can describe it is feeling "small". And after apologizing to Amethyst and seeing Amethyst accept her apology she describes it as feeling "big".
- When She Smiles: Peridot makes her first non-malicious smile when she starts laughing along with Amethyst. And a truly adorable one after Amethyst accepts her apology.
- Wingding Eyes:
- Steven gets dizzy swirls in his after he's been spun around by the drill.
- Amethyst has star shaped eyes when she has Peridot roast the Crystal Gems.
