Original airdate: February 17th, 2017
Production code: 1040-124
The episode begins right after the events of “The New Crystal Gems”, only the Gems and Greg have all gone off somewhere leaving Steven and Connie alone in the house.
Connie ceremonially returns Steven's bed to him, and as they return downstairs, Connie says she hopes she'll get to say goodbye to the Gems before her mother arrives. Steven is in no hurry for Connie to leave, as usual – but Connie asks if he doesn't need some alone time or space to think about his harrowing adventure in space.
- Steven: The last thing I need is more space!
Connie calls her mother, but the call goes to voicemail, uncharacteristically for her mother. Connie is a litte bewildered, but since she can't go home without a ride, she stays.
Steven suggests they pass the time.
...the shot changes to indicate they've passed quite a lot of time. They assembled a 1000 piece puzzle, built a rather lofty house of cards, and are playing "Weird Words". Connie, now more than a little concerned at the absence of her usually prompt mother, calls again and the voicemail picks up. Again. Steven starts another round of Weird Words to distract her, but her worry is infecting the game as she suggests articles of speech that indicate she's worried her mother has gotten into a car accident ending in an explosion. Steven offers to take Connie home on Lion, but it's not the getting home that concerns her, it's her mother's out of character lateness without calling.
Finally Priyanka arrives, and is all apologies, explaining that a surgery ran late and she had to cover for another doctor, and that her phone died because a patient might've stolen her charger. She thanks Steven for allowing Connie to stay late, and murmurs to Connie that Steven (still in his Zooman outfit) must be back from the spa.
- Connie: No, I said space.
All alone with nothing but his thoughts, Steven showers and changes back into his usual clothing. He microwaves himself a little mac and cheese, then sits in the living room to eat it. Unfortunately, he's not entirely alone. The room is completely overshadowed by the calm and benevolent painting of Rose that hangs above the door. Steven tries to ignore it for a while, then takes his meal outside – only to have a delicate little rain suddenly turn into a furious thunderstorm.
Back inside with his waterlogged meal, Steven begins thinking out loud about Rose. In response to his emotions, his gem lights up and he walks into Rose's room.
After being awkward about not having been in the room lately, he asks it to show him his mother. A Cloud!Rose is created and they share a sweetly awkward handshake. Steven tries to bond with her by playing video games, and then football. They laugh and hug, and Steven wonders why he never tried this before. He tries to take a selfie to have a memento... But nothing the room shows is picked up by the camera. Steven realizes that the Cloud!Rose isn't really his mother – she's what Steven wants his mother to be like. He demands to know what she really is, and as his emotions bubble up about what Rose did to Bismuth and to Pink Diamond, the room reflects his turmoil by stirring up a storm.
Steven accuses his mother of being a user, a hurter, and a liar, who abandoned the Crystal Gems and Greg.
- Steven: They don't know what to do without you!
He accuses her further of having only created Steven himself to get away from her mistakes and leave him to clean up the mess she left behind.
The Cloud!Rose reminds him of what the real Rose told him in the videotape she left him, and asks him if he believes everything she said to him there was a lie.
Steven calms again as he remembers the tape, and admits he believed she meant her words sincerely. They start to embrace again, and Steven lets the illusion of Rose drop. He leaves the room and returns to his cold, waterlogged meal.
But the door opens and-
- Greg: Look who's back in jean shorts!Steven: Dad! Garnet! Amethyst! And Pearl!
Greg has brought over pizza and apologizes that they were out of pepperoni so he got mushroom.
Steven is just happy to have his family together. Pizza without pepperoni, but with mushrooms hardly figures into his restored happiness.
Tropes:
- Adaptation Sequence: In-Universe, Steven introduces Cloud Rose to an arm-wrestling videogame that is a spinoff of a fighting game based on the Lonely Blade TV show.
- Alternative Character Interpretation: In-Universe. Steven questions whether Rose was a failure and a coward that ran from her failures and created him as a means to hide from her mistakes.
- Ambiguous Situation: It's not clear if Rose was simply an artificial construct like what we've seen before, if Rose left enough of herself in the room that it could create a fuller version of her, or if she was actually being channeled through Steven's gem. She seems more advanced than many cloud constructs, but is she any moreso than Cloud Connie? Also, while both responded to Steven's subconscious wishes, Cloud Rose was far more tactful in her interaction with Steven, offering honest and caring feedback while never approaching the point of doing him harm, even when he unloaded his doubts at her. Cloud Connie went off the rails as soon as Steven understood her to be an illusion. This may be Steven having greater awareness of the room's limitations. Then again, since Steven/Rose's gem glowed when he wished he could know the truth about her, it's not impossible that the room actually manifested her presence to fulfil his wish. There's also the fact that Cloud Rose responds to Steven's declaration that she's not really his mother with "I'm not?", as normal cloud creations are pretty obediant to Steven's statements.
- Armor-Piercing Question: Cloud Rose gets Steven to reconsider his anger at Rose and doubt about himself by asking him if he really thinks she was lying on the tape she left for him to find inside of Lion. Steven realizes that no, he doesn't, and that she might not have been perfect, but she's not as bad as he let himself start thinking.Cloud Rose: Steven, you know that isn't true. In the tape I left you, I told you how much I wanted to have you and let you exist. Do you think that what I said to you in the tape was a lie?
- Audience Surrogate: Steven vents to Cloud Rose about what he and a good portion of the audience have been feeling.
- Bittersweet Ending: Steven, after he's let his emotions loose and Cloud Rose has comforted him, leaves the room and lies down on the couch. Greg and the Gems then arrive with pizza and he starts to perk up, giving the impression that his family can help him through his feelings.
- Bland-Name Product: Steven and Connie play a Mad Libs-like game called "Weird Words". They also have a board game called Cosmic Engagement out on the table.
- Boggles the Mind: When Connie starts to worry about her mom, Steven tries to take her mind off things with a game of Weird Words. Steven stops when Connie keeps giving words like "mishap", "crashed", and "explosion".
- Broken Pedestal: After learning about some of Rose's darker secrets, Steven's perception of her has faltered. He isn't quite sure how to process it, but by the end seems to finally accept that his mother wasn't perfect, but she wasn't as bad as he was starting to think she was.
- Call-Back:
- Twice the Cloud Rose makes a speech clearly patterned after the one on Rose's tape in "Lion 3: Straight to Video". She directly brings up again at the end, asking Steven if he thought she was lying.
- Much like in "Open Book", Steven stops playing with Rose when he remembers that she's just a part of the Room, not actually his mother. He also remembers that the Room gives him what he wants, not what's real, but that the Room can help him with finding closure.
- When Steven starts to call out Rose, he references Bismuth and Pink Diamond, as well as how all of Homeworld has it out for Earth.
- While worrying about her mother, Connie takes a deep breath and does the mindfulness meditation pose that Garnet taught her in "Mindful Education."
- Calling the Old Man Out: Steven finally snaps at Cloud Rose over his anger at having to deal with all the messes Rose Quartz left behind. Cloud Rose (who Steven acknowledges is just him talking to himself) reminds him of the tape she left for him, asking if he believes it was a lie — he doesn't, and he knows how loving she was in it.
- Cell Phones Are Useless: Dr. Maheswaran couldn't reply to her daughter's increasingly worried calls because her phone's battery died and she couldn't find her charger (she suspects a patient stole it).
- Character Development:
- Instead of repressing his emotions to let them bubble out at a bad time, Steven decides to deal with them directly, without the Gems' help.
- Dr. Maheswaran's relationship with Connie and Steven is shown to have dramatically improved since "Nightmare Hospital": When she finally arrives at the temple, she hugs and apologizes to her daughter for arriving late and scaring her (she had to do last-minute surgery and she couldn't text Connie to let her know since her phone battery died) and she thanks Steven for allowing Connie to stay longer than intended.
- Continuity Nod:
- Connie calms herself by sitting and doing some deep breathing, like Garnet showed her and Steven in "Mindful Education".
- Dr. Maheswaran was late because she had to cover for Dr. Stromberg, the guy who called her in to treat what turned out to be cluster gems in "Nightmare Hospital"
- Rose reminds Steven of the video she left him in "Lion 3: Straight to Video".
- Steven mentioning his temptation to emulate Rose by dyeing his hair pink explains his insight into the dyeing process exhibited in "Last One Out Of Beach City".
- Another one to "Last One Out Of Beach City", Steven and Connie finish the zebra puzzle Steven was working on with Pearl.
- Driven to Suicide: Not outright said, but Steven admits that he sometimes wonders if Rose made him just to escape from her mistakes.
- Elephant in the Room: Subverted. Steven tells Rose that he's had a lot of questions that he's wanted to ask her, and stories he's heard. He obviously means what he's learned during the past two seasons but is too polite to bring it up. After remembering that she's just a construct, however, he starts to unleash all his fears, anger and frustrations on her.
- Empathic Environment: As Steven releases his buried frustration towards the Cloud Rose, the Room becomes more and more tumultuous until it's a dark, raging storm.
- Foreshadowing:
- While waiting with Connie, Steven plays several games of a Mad Libs-style word game. While playing with Cloud Rose, she makes a speech that's basically a word-swap of one the few words he's directly heard his mother say, altered to be about sports instead of humans.
- In the beginning, Connie is worried about her mom's safety, if she even made it back. After Connie leaves, Steven starts worrying about his mom and what she left behind.
- Steven, while playing with Cloud Rose, asks why he didn't do this before. He gets his answer soon after: Cloud Rose isn't his mother, just a recreation of how he wants her to be.
- Freak Out: When she has trouble contacting her mother when she's running late picking her up, Connie starts getting more and more anxious and worried about her.
- Frozen Dinner of Loneliness: Played with: after Connie leaves, Steven microwaves himself a bowl of mac and cheese. This is to underline his solitary state. We've seen that Steven is capable of cooking more elaborate meals if he wants to.
- Funny Answering Machine: Connie's mother's voicemail ends with a sharp comment that if the caller is one of her patients, they shouldn't have her personal number.
- Hope Spot: Steven gets along with Cloud Rose, and tries to do parental things with her like play Video Games and toss a football. When he tries to take a selfie, however, he remembers that this Rose isn't real, that the real Rose is gone, and that she left him to deal with her problems.
- Lightbulb Joke: Steven makes a joke to Connie about how many Gems it takes to screw in a lightbulb.
- Lighter and Softer: Than previous episodes focused on Rose's Room, at least. Between the Room's limitations and Steven's carelessness in voicing what he wants (as well as, possibly, it trying to be a Stealth Mentor to him), previous attempts at using it have ended up being fairly harrowing. Here, while Cloud Rose comes off slightly awkward, all of her interactions with Steven end up fun, harmless, and even comforting; even when Steven starts unleashing his negative feelings about her, while it looks for a moment like she's about to go haywire on him, she ends up just gently discussing his problems without any need for confrontation.
- Logical Weakness: Steven tries to ask his mother why she lied to everyone and hurt them while trying to protect him. Rose can't give him a straight answer because the Room only knows what Steven knows, not what Rose was thinking at the time. With that said, Steven has enough evidence for the Room to give him an answer that placates him.
- Missing Reflection: The Room and its constructs don't show up on camera; Steven only sees himself in a black void when he tries to take a selfie.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Connie starts worrying when Priyanka isn't answering her cell or returning her messages, which is highly unusual for her.
- Personal Raincloud: The promotional image for this episode shows a black raincloud raining on Steven.
- Rebuilt Pedestal: Steven still has a lot of issues to resolve about his feelings on Rose, but the room makes him recognize that his mom really wanted him to exist out of love.
- Redemption in the Rain: Once Steven manages to accept that Rose wasn't perfect and didn't create him just to escape her problems, he hugs Cloud Rose while rain starts to pour down inside the room.
- The Scapegoat: Steven reveals that he started to consider himself a way for Rose to escape the consequences of her actions while leaving the baggage on his shoulders.
- Shout-Out
- While playing football with Cloud Rose, Steven falls for the old "pull-away-the-football" prank Lucy always pulls on Charlie Brown in Peanuts. The promotional art above has Steven drawn in the same style.
- Steven and Connie play Mad Libs while waiting for her mother.
- Shower of Angst: Though we don't see Steven in the shower directly, we do see him brooding in front of the mirror while waiting for the water to heat up.
- Sins of Our Fathers: Rose's problems, secrets, and mistakes have been haunting Steven, and it's finally proving too much to bear.Steven: I get it. I know you didn't want me to deal with your problems. You're a part of me now. I have to deal with what you left behind.
- Sympathy for the Devil: Part of the reason Steven calls out Cloud Rose is because he's seen how the Diamonds and Homeworld are affected by Rose shattering Pink Diamond, in addition to Homeworld targeting the Crystal Gems.
- Talking to Themself: Cloud Rose is just Steven doing this via the room, and he even admits as much.
- Taught by Experience: Steven immediately reminds himself that Cloud Rose isn't real, rather than give her a Logic Bomb as he gave Cloud Connie in "Open Book". This means that instead of the Room attacking him to get him to confess, Rose delivers a calm Armor-Piercing Question and a Cooldown Hug.
- Troubled Fetal Position: Steven lies on Rose's lap in this way, to seek comfort.
- True Companions: The episode starts out with Steven seeing the caring relationship Connie has with her mom. Then, he tries to make himself a microwave dinner because nobody in his broken family is home, and he feels like he has to take care of himself. Then he goes into his room and has it generate his own mother so he can meet her and spend time with her like normal kids get to. When he leaves the room, goes back to his dinner waiting cold on the table in his empty house... until Greg and the Gems burst back in with a pizza and apologize for being late. Steven realizes that he does have a family who loves him and looks out for him; it's just not a typical one.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Priyanka's sole comment on Steven's bizarre Zoo attire is that he must have been at the spa. Connie clarifies that he was in space.
- Vision Quest: Steven faces down his troubled feelings towards his mother by venting his frustrations at her image, before realizing that, everything else aside, Rose really did love him and wanted him to exist.
- Was It All a Lie?: Inverted; Cloud Rose asks Steven if he thought that the real Rose lied in the video. He admits that she didn't.
- Wham Shot: Downplayed. Steven wants to take a selfie with the room's construct of Rose, only to see himself surrounded by darkness; reminding him that it's all an illusion, a projection of what he wants to see.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Steven calls out Cloud Rose for her actions, like keeping secrets from the Crystal Gems.Steven: I've learned things about you. Things you wanted to keep secret. You locked Bismuth away inside of Lion, because she wanted to shatter Gems, and you never told Garnet or Pearl. But then you shattered Pink Diamond! Now all of Homeworld has it out for Earth, and the Crystal Gems and me! You put us all in danger, and you just disappeared!
I finally know the truth. I know what you are! You're a liar! I thought you'd never want to hurt anyone! You hurt everyone! How could you just leave Garnet, and Amethyst and Pearl, and—and Dad?! They don't know what to do without you! Maybe they didn't matter to you as much as hiding the mess you made! And that's why I'm here, isn't it?! Did you just make me so you just wouldn't have to deal with your mistakes?! *sigh* Is that what I'm all here for...? - Wingding Eyes: After Cloud Rose makes a short speech about the beauty of sports, Steven has starry eyes.
