Original airdate: June 16th, 2015
Production code: 1031-059
"For months, Keep Beach City Weird has been silent. Silent but not dead. For I have been toiling away on a super top secret project that will blow the lid off of your perception jar of reality!
Tomorrow, at 6pm, I unleash my masterpiece upon the internet."
Tomorrow, at 6pm, I unleash my masterpiece upon the internet."
— Ronaldo Fryman, Keep Beach City Weird
Ronaldo creates a documentary to determine if Steven and the Gems are safe for Beach City.
Tropes:
- Accidental Misnaming: Pearl calls Ronaldo "Frybo", which is the name of the mascot for the restaurant his family owns.
- Acoustic License: Comically subverted; Ronaldo attempts to record a monologue without a mic while hundreds of feet from the camera, but is completely inaudible.
- Apathetic Citizens: Even when Ronaldo tells the citizens outright that the Crystal Gems are responsible for all the weirdness, they just don't care. Fryman is more concerned with running his business. It's possible that they're just desensitized to it, considering the Gems have been in Beach City for as long as anyone can remember.
- Ask a Stupid Question...: When the Crystal Gems are accused of being a threat to Beach City, Steven asks what Ronaldo is talking about. Pan the camera over to Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl attacking a Giant Enemy Crab.Peedee: OOOOOOOOOOOOh my gosh. What the heck is that?
- Batman Gambit: After Ronaldo pesters the Crystal Gems that Beach City would be safer without them, Garnet touches her visor (usually a sign she's using Future Vision) and abruptly tells him they'll leave. Peedee later points out their absence will leave Beach City without any "weird" things, causing Ronaldo to crawl back asking them to stay. Garnet admits to Steven she never planned to leave, and most likely knew Ronaldo would take his request back (otherwise he'd just go back to pestering them after he realized she was lying).
- Both Sides Have a Point: Ronaldo brings up the valid issue that the Gems are constantly attracting danger to the city and strives to do so something about it. While the citizens of Beach City are too self concerned to give any thought to the problem, they present the defense that the kinds of threats the Gems deal with are too much for ordinary humans to handle.
- Breather Episode: This episode is more comical than episode immediately preceding it, "Sworn to the Sword", and the most lighthearted and comedic in tone of all the Stevenbomb 2.0 episodes.
- Buffy Speak: The hand-shaped Gem warship Peridot and Jasper came on is called "the giant hand thing".
- Caption Humor: The caption description for some of the characters are pretty hilarious.
- Chair Reveal: Ronaldo attempts the Chair Entrance version, but his chair swivels past the camera.
- Continuity Nod: There's a lot of nods to previous episodes.
- Several events from "The Return"/"Jail Break" are shown or discussed.
- Kiki mentions how Steven and the Gems made burgers in "Beach Party" and Jenny recalls how Garnet nearly hit her face in "Joy Ride".
- Pictures from some of the posts on his blog are shown: the Watermelon Stevens beating up Ronaldo◊ is obvious, and the picture zoomed in on Steven's stomach labeled "Baby Maybe?" was taken directly from his entry on Steven's Lion. The other◊ two images◊ appear to be call backs to his entries on astral projection and Serious Steven respectively.
- The caption for Sadie identifies her as a "Horror Movie Enthusiast".
- A Day in the Limelight: Ronaldo.
- Department of Redundancy Department:
- Ronaldo introduces himself as the author of Keep Beach City Weird. His mission? Keep Beach City weird.
- "Danger on the Boardwalk: The Truth about the Most Dangerous Boardwalk".
- Ronaldo mentions how the space hand "exploded into an explosion".
- The caption for Mayor Dewey identifies him as "Mayor Dewey". His nameplate, which is still visible below the caption, also says "Mayor Dewey".
- Ronaldo tells the Crystal Gems "Beach City would be way safer if you guys weren't here!" As they begin to talk, they're captioned "The Crystal Gems: Beach City would be way safer if they weren't here."
- Didn't Think This Through: Ronaldo fails to realize that Beach City wouldn't be weird anymore if the Crystal Gems were to leave until Peedee points it out.
- Documentary Episode: The entire episode is Ronaldo's in-universe documentary of the weirdness going on in town.
- Failed a Spot Check: A mutual fail with the brothers Fryman, Peedee apparently fails to notice Ronaldo when he trails a wet mop into the room, and Ronaldo fails to notice the water trail.
- Foreshadowing: When Ronaldo is "re-enacting" the hand-ship's crash, he gets his hand pinched by a crab, which turns out to be a Gem monster minion. Also, his talk of a human zoo? Yeah, about that..
- Giant Enemy Crab: The creature Steven and the Gems battle.
- Go for the Eye: Garnet shouts this to Pearl while fighting the gem crab.
- The Greatest Story Never Told: Although not told well, the subject matter of Ronaldo's documentary is pretty significant. No one in Beach City cares and no one outside is listening—the only one who watches it online is Steven. Just to rub salt in the wound, the real life version of Ronaldo's blog shows the video was removed for copyright violations shortly after being posted, so no one can ever see it.
- I Just Want to Be Special: Ronaldo is reduced to tears at the thought that Beach City won't be weird anymore, which would mean he'd be ordinary too.
- I Lied: Garnet claims that the Gems will leave Beach City when Ronaldo asks them to to get him to stop bothering them. After Ronaldo comes back and asks them to stay, she openly admits to Steven that she was never planning to leave, she just wanted to get the camera out of her face.
- In-Universe Camera: Ronaldo's documentary is viewed by a camera that Peedee operates.
- Insistent Terminology:Peedee Is it really okay for us to be lurking around like this?
Ronaldo: We're not lurking, we're investigating! - It's All About Me: Until he's corrected by Steven, Ronaldo assumes the hand-ship was there for him because he knows the truth. Later, given the choice between keeping the city safe and keeping it weird so he'll have blog material, Ronaldo chooses the latter.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Ronaldo brings up valid concerns about the Gems' presence in Beach City. Various threats have been drawn there because of the Gems, who basically say "we were here first so deal with it" and are very apathetic to the trouble they cause to the humans that live near them. Ronaldo's father agrees with his son that bad things have happened because of the Gems but points out that normal humans can't really do anything about the threats.
- Jump Cut: The editing is at time deliberately jarring for comic effect; several times Ronaldo is cut off mid-sentence.
- Low Count Gag: After the end shows Steven and the Crystal Gems watched Ronaldo's video, Pearl asks how many people have seen it, and Amethyst points out they're its only view.
- Man Hug: Ronaldo hugs Peedee after he admits he was upset when forced to leave the Fry shop.Peedee: I'm fine, let me go!
Ronaldo: You can't make up drama this good! - Mathematician's Answer: Ronaldo asks Sadie who the Crystal Gems are, but though she knows they're connected to Steven, Sadie has no idea how. Instead of assuming some specific relation, she calls them "Steven's... family?"
- Milkman Conspiracy: The hand ship came to attack the Crystal Gems, and Ronaldo had some very strange alternate theories.Wait, so the hand wasn't here to snatch up humans for a human zoo, or interfere with our subsidized Beach City wind farm, or thaw out the cryogenically frozen pets of the one percent?!
- My God, What Have I Done?: Ronaldo realizes that without the Gems, Beach City would be normal, and he wouldn't have anything for his blog.
- New Powers as the Plot Demands: Amethyst suddenly uses her hair as a blade big and strong enough to chop off the crab gem's claw. She never does this again.
- Noodle Incident: A miscommunication makes Mayor Dewey think that Ronaldo is investigating a "cover-up". We never find out what Dewey was allegedly covering up.
- No OSHA Compliance: Peedee puts down a wet floor sign, but only after trailing water on the floor and not warning his brother, causing him to slip.
- Offscreen Crash: Ronaldo fails to capture the moment of impact when the hand-ship crashes.Ronaldo: Unbelievab—I missed it!
- Overly Long Gag: The in-video title of the documentary is spelled out word-by-word, slowly, punctuated with an over-the-top sound effect, and there's an extra subtitle added on at the end.
- Proscenium Reveal: The last scene reveals the audience is not seeing the documentary as it is being filmed, but Steven watching it with the other Crystal Gems on his computer.
- Self-Serving Memory:
- Peedee deliberately left out his tears at being forced to leave the shop in "The Return". Fortunately for us, Ronaldo recorded it.
- Jenny doesn't lie necessarily, but she does play off Garnet almost hitting her back in "Joy Ride" as more malevolent than it actually was: she got between Garnet and Peridot's escape pod while Steven was in it to protect him but makes it out that Garnet was lashing out for no reason.
- Shout-Out: Ronaldo sitting between two ferns, is a reference to "Between Two Ferns with Zachary Galifianakis".
- Sword Beam: Pearl again fires energy from her spear, but instead of a single, charged blast it's a rapidfire series of small blasts that crack and wear down the crab gem's shell, and even sounds like a machinegun.
- Superhero Paradox: Ronaldo argues that the Crystal Gems put Beach City in danger by attracting monsters, as well as the attack by the Homeworld Gems. Pearl agrees that they do attract Gem monsters, but points out that they were at Beach City before any humans moved in.
- The Unreveal: When Ronaldo tries to interview Onion, it looks like we're finally going to see him talk, only for him to swat the microphone away and run off.
- Unreliable Narrator: Anything Ronaldo says should be taken with a grain of salt if we don't know it to be true already, especially when he made it seem like he was a master alien diplomat.
