House Guest
Newcomers to this show might be led to wonder why Greg doesn’t live with Steven even though he loves his son so much. The answer for that mostly relates to how the Crystal Gems don’t want mere humans like him to get involved in potentially dangerous magic business. This cartoon even shows that Greg wants to be with his son more than anything and, in a great bit of continuity from the last few cartoons, gets a chance to move in with Steven due to a broken leg from the stolen ocean incident. Steven does attempt to heal Greg’s leg with his healing spit, but it apparently doesn’t work and that completely opens up the possibility for Greg to move in. For a moment, we get a big display of family love that shows the great strength of Steven and Greg’s father-son relationship with many moments of them having fun together all set against a nice, upbeat song called “Dear Old Dad” which also works in this show’s talent for music. It’s all you need to get a good understanding of Greg’s actions for the rest of the cartoon. That said, it can still get overbearing with how Greg pines for his son’s attention. He constantly calls him from important Gem-related missions for the most frivolous of things which prevents Steven from doing anything productive. It’s an even bigger deal that Steven getting the idea that his healing spit didn’t work to heal his dad’s leg is preventing him from using it to mend a crack in a huge structure called a geode. Then comes the big reveal that Greg was faking his injury the whole time, and hiding the fact that Steven’s healing spit did cure it. It’s certainly concerning that someone like Greg would go too far with the wrong thing like this. Surely he should’ve known that hiding important information like this would cause a lot of problems. I will give him credit though that it was all for the sake of spending time with his son who he rarely gets to see. Plus, Greg goes on to redeem himself by the end of the cartoon. The geode gets way out of control, and even though he knows that his healing spit worked all along, Steven still doesn’t believe in them enough to patch it up, so they don’t work, and it’s a repercussion that doesn’t get resolved until much later in the series making for a believable angle in the situation by not resolving everything right away. As for Greg, he ultimately saves the day by patching the geode with duct tape of all things, and later on, while he and his son part ways again, it’s still nice that things are all good between them. While his actions of hiding the truth from his own son and messing up his powers bring the appeal down and the story is less entertaining than much of what we’ve gotten, the amount of family love here is enough to make it a good watch. 8/10
The Ranking
- Ocean Gem
- Coach Steven
- Mirror Gem
- An Indirect Kiss
- So Many Birthdays
- Steven the Sword Fighter
- Lion 2: The Movie
- Bubble Buddies
- Monster Buddies
- Laser Light Cannon
- Giant Woman
- Lars and the Cool Kids
- Steven’s Lion
- Gem Glow
- Steven and the Stevens
- Rose’s Room
- Cheeseburger Backpack
- House Guest
- Serious Steven
- Joking Victim
- Beach Party
- Cat Fingers
- Tiger Millionaire
- Together Breakfast
- Frybo
- Onion Trade
- Arcade Mania
Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode filled with a lot of development for Pearl in "Space Race."
If you would like to check out other reviews on this blog, click here for the guide to all the reviews posted so far. 
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