History Recap / StevenUniverseS1E26OceanGem

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* LiteralMinded: Amethyst assumes "grounding" to mean they have to bury Steven in the ground.

* NewPowersAsThePlotDemands: Steven's shield create a shockwave that disperses the water clones [[FriendlyFireproof without hurting his allies]], something it would never do before or after.

** In [[Recap/StevenUniverseS1E22StevenAndTheStevens "Steven and the Stevens"]], the Stevens travel to a desert with stranded boats, which eventually happens in this episode.

It's the morning after Lapis Lazuli left Steven and the Gems on the beach. They are home now, on the porch. Steven protests against being grounded. Pearl insists he is; Garnet clarifies it's because he disobeyed a direct order. Amethyst, serious and upset, lifts a shovel and tells him that they're going to [[LiteralMinded bury him alive until he's learned his lesson.]]

->'''Greg:''' Is this a normal magic mission for you? 'Cause I'm not sure I'm comfortable with you going on them any mo--

-> '''Steven:''' I ''said'' "I don't want to fight!"

Lapis demands to know what Steven is doing, but he reverses the question on her, insisting that Gems should all be friends. Lapis chastises him for his naiveness over the Crystal Gems; in her eyes, they don't care about other Gems as much as they care for the Earth, a planet she never believed in. She looks sadly at the stars and indicates she was only using the ocean to stretch into space far enough to go home. Steven points out that the ocean is an important part of his home and that's why he's there to get it back. Lapis laments that if her gem weren't damaged, she could try to get home on her own. Steven tells her he has healing powers, and heals her gem. From the gem, water wings spread and Lapis' eyes are no longer reflective; she's completely healed! She thanks him and leaves flying. Seconds later, without her magic to hold it together, Lapis' ocean tower comes apart, and Steven falls back toward earth. Connie and Lion pull a mid-air portal rescue, then Steven bubbles the Universe van and the others. They return to Beach City triumphant, aside from Greg's broken leg and totaled van.

* AGoodNameForARockBand: A visual example. Greg's reaction on seeing that Lapis has turned the entire ocean into a giant space needle stretching into the heavens is to say that he's just had the best idea for an album cover.

* BatmanCanBreatheInSpace: It's already been established that the gems don't need to breathe; but Steven does. Despite that, in this episode, he has no trouble breathing at an altitude at which there should basically be no atmosphere.
* BookEnds: In the second episode of the first two aired, "Laser Light Cannon", Greg's van ends up damaged on the beach from being washed out to sea. In this episode, which was originally meant to be the last of the first season, Greg's van ends up badly damaged and back on the beach after the ocean returns.

** Steven's shield from "Gem Glow" makes a return. This time he consciously summons it.
** Steven's uses his Bubble force field from "Bubble Buddies" and "Lion 2: The Movie".
** Connie's parents said in "Mirror Gem" that she couldn't hang with Steven that day, but could spend the entire next day with Steven, and that's exactly what she does. She even implies she'd be stuck in Beach City alone all day if she didn't leave with Steven.
** In "Steven and the Stevens" one of the Stevens travels to a desert with deserted boats, which eventually happens in this episode.

* CausticCritic: Garnet has a...[[http://68.media.tumblr.com/7ab78b34684599db93e2caf748576acb/tumblr_nchdheoVE11sr0k7ao2_1280.gif less than tactful way]] of showing Greg what she thinks of his music.

** Pearl's note that she hates fighting herself may be referencing her hologram-self from "Steven the Sword Fighter".
** While fighting against her clone Amethyst transforms into her Purple Puma persona from "Tiger Millionaire".
** Pearl takes over driving the van while Greg sleeps. She showed she could drive back in "Arcade Mania".
** In "Lion 2: The Movie", Connie said Steven obviously has some "magical destiny". When she sees Lapis's water tower, she remarks "That's some magical destiny stuff, right there."
** After Greg's van is totaled Pearl tries to comfort him with little luck by referencing his catchphrase from "Laser Light Cannon".

* TheDogBitesBack: Tired of Lars talking out loud his plans of summer flirting, Sadie pushes him into the recently-returned water.

* {{Flashback}}: As Pearl and Amethyst explain that every monster they've fought used to be a Gem, the scene flashes back to show many of the monsters they've fought and bubbled in order, right up to the last one in "Monster Buddies".

* IrisOut: Over a distant diamond-shaped star above the temple: likely the same one from Mirror Gem. The iris itself briefly changes from a five pointed star to a four pointed one in order to outline said distant star.

* MultiPartEpisode: With "[[Recap/StevenUniverseS1E25MirrorGem Mirror Gem]]."
* NewPowersAsThePlotDemands: Steven shield create a shockwave that disperses the water clones [[FriendlyFireproof without hurting his allies]], something it would never do before or after.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: While he had his reasons, and it wasn't really the wrong choice, the immediate cause of the disaster in this episode is Steven releasing Lapis without asking enough questions about who she was and what she'd do after she was freed. Though part of the blame can be laid at the feet of the Gems, who kept Steven in the dark instead of saying "We're afraid that this artifact might be dangerous, or contain a monster," instead of insisting they knew best and trying to take away Steven's new friend.

* NoEndorHolocaust: The potential damage caused by the retreat of the entire ocean for at least a day is mostly ignored, as are the consequences of the ocean falling back to earth afterwards.

* SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale: Lapis's water pillar is able to reach out into space, but not even as far as the moon. If she really focused all the ocean's water into a pillar of that size (judging from the scenes showing the Earth from above, she did), it should be '''much''' taller than that[[labelnote:math]]Earth's ocean is about 1.3 billion cubic kilometers in volume. Even a width of 50 meters, a high estimate for what we saw, would require it to be about 660 billion kilometers tall; about 4400 times the Earth's distance from the sun.[[/labelnote]]--so much that creating it in a day would require most of the water to have traveled faster than the speed of light. Although even ''that'' wouldn't be anywhere near far enough to reach another solar system as Lapis wanted. Conversely, making a pillar of the ''shown'' size would not even reduce the ocean's volume enough to counter the last year of melting ice caps in real world Earth.

* StarScraper: Lapis' makes a tower that reaches the ''[[PersonOfMassConstruction
stratosphere]]'' in an ill-conceived attempt to lift herself back to her homeworld. She acknowledges that it wasn't the best plan, but with her gem damaged she can't do any better.

** The revelation that the monsters they've been fighting all of first season are [[WasOnceAMan corrupted gems]] shows that Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl aren't even that close to being the last Gems on Earth; they're merely the last ''sane'' gems on earth.

'''Pearl:''' Oh, how do I put this? All Gems aren't necessarily...good, and-\\

* NewPowersAsThePlotDemands: Steven's shield is able to create a shockwave that disperses the water clones [[FriendlyFireproof without hurting his allies]], something it would never do before or after.

* AskAStupidQuestion: This exchange:
-->'''Mayor Dewey:''' What's going on here?\\
'''Garnet:''' The ocean is gone, obviously.

* AntagonistTitle: Once more, Ocean Gem is referring to Lapis.

** Steven's Bubble force field from "Bubble Buddies" and "Lion 2: The Movie".
** Connie's parents said in "Mirror Gem" that she couldn't hang with Steven that day, but could spend the entire next day with Steven, and that's exactly what she does.

** Pearl knowing how to drive was shown in "Arcade Mania".

** After his van is totaled Pearl tries to comfort him with little luck by referencing his catchphrase from "Laser Light Cannon".

* {{Flashback}}: As Pearl and Amethyst explain that every monster they've fought used to be a Gem, the scene flashes back to show every monster they've fought and bubbled in order, right up to the last one in "Monster Buddies".

* HealingHands: Steven uses his magic spit to restore Lapis.
* InelegantBlubbering: Mayor Dewey at the idea of losing all the summer tourist dollars.

* TheReveal: All the monsters the Gems fight are really corrupted Gems. The Gems are also revealed to actually alien in origin.

* ShootingSuperman: Steven uses a super soaker on his water copy. Understandably, this is useless.

* StarScraper: Lapis' ocean tower, made in an ill-conceived attempt to lift herself back to her homeworld. She acknowledges that it wasn't the best plan, but with her gem damaged she can't do any better.

* TakeMyHand: Connie and Lion as Lapis' tower begins to revert to salt water and Steven begins to fall from literally the edge of the atmosphere. Also the title of the music track in that scene.

%%* CrossReferencedTitles

* KickTheSonOfABitch: Tired of Lars talking out loud his plans of summer flirting, Sadie pushes him into the recently-returned water.

* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: Played for laughs with Garnet's reaction to Greg's music.

* TheAtoner: Steven feels it is his fault that the ocean has vanished, and sets out to fix it. Of course, Connie, Greg, Lion and the Gems all declare they're accompanying him.

* WouldHurtAChild: Lapis Lazuli was perfectly willing to drown Connie and Steven. She would have succeeded if not for Greg and his van. Possibly unintentional on her part, however; being isolated for so long, she might not have known that humans needed to breathe air and might have just been trying to immobilize them.

** Pearl references Greg's catchphrase from, "Laser Light Cannon".

** After his van is totaled Pearl tries to comfort him with little luck.

* WhamEpisode: All those creatures the Gems have been fighting, destroying, collecting their [[HeartDrive central gems]]? All of them are of the same species as the Crystal Gems, and were once as humanoid as they were, but somehow were corrupted and turned into monsters. And the setting got expanded to include the depths of space, where there are presumably more Gems.

* WhamEpisode: All those creatures the Gems have been fighting, destroying, collecting their crystals? All of them are corrupted Gems. And the setting got expanded to include the depths of space, where there are presumably more Gems.

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: While he had his reasons, and it wasn't really the wrong choice, the immediate cause of the disaster in this episode is Steven releasing Lapis without asking enough questions about who she was and what she'd do after she was freed.

* AbsurdAltitude: Lapis's column of water stretches far above the Earth's surface, and she was hoping to stretching far into space in an effort to reach home.

** Steven's Bubble force field from "Bubble Buddies" and "Lion 2: The Movie"

** In "Steven and the Stevens" one of the Stevens travels to a desert with deserted boats, which evantually happens in this episode.

-->'''Pearl:''' What's that you always say about the pork chops?

* {{Foreshadowing}}: Lapis' desire to return home, to other Gems, would hint at the existance of a larger society of Gems. This would later herald the introduction of Homeworld, the Diamonds, and Gem Society as a whole.

* TheReveal: All the monsters the gems fight are really corrupted gems. The Gems are also revealed to actually alien in origin.

** Not only did the revelation of Lapis' very existence in the previous episode prove that Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl weren't really the last of the gems, but in this episode, her strong desire to go "home" heavily implies that, out in space, there may be ''many'' more gems, with them not really being near extinction at all.
** The revelation that the monsters they've been fighting all of first season are [[WasOnceAMan corrupted gems]] shows that Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl aren't even that close to being the last gems on Earth; they're merely the last ''sane'' gems on earth.

They arrive at the beach, discovering that the ocean is completely gone, leaving nothing but sand, beached vessels, and junk as far as the eye can see. Mayor Dewey is in a right tizzy, upset at the loss of vital summer revenue if people won't come to a Beach City that lacks a beach. All the people Steven has met so far in the season are gathered on the beach; Fryman worries that he'll have no customers. So does Dad Pizza. Lars laments that the girls won't come if there's no beach. Mr. Smiley expresses concern that no one will come to Funland.