"Beach City Drift" Discussion

Ronaldo also came back but luckily, he isn't as bad of a character as he was in Keep Beach City Weird.

Their obsession over Kevin was odd...almost like a warped attraction. They should've listened to Greg, and in the end they realized Greg was right. Jerks like Kevin feed on negative attention.

Mood rings were a thing in 1996. I don't recall that.

Odd moment when after Steven and Connie unfuse and stop in the road, Jenny says "I'm going to check on them." Just how much is she aware of? Like the previous episode Lars and Sadie accept what happened, the others present in Steven's house don't realize what was going on or question what Lars and Steven even said.

Kevin accepts they are two kids in a trench coat, having witnessed their splitting apart. He's no longer freaked out by the concept.

I was confused by their prolonged dislike of Kevin, to be honest. I guess I need to re-watch the prior Stevonnie episode.

My only impression of Kevin at the dance was that he was pretentious, maybe a little insistent, but they were acting like he forced Stevonnie to dance against their will or something. Frankly, I was getting an assault vibe from their hatred of him, which seemed way overblown for what actually happened. Stevonnie weren't having a good time at the dance before Kevin got involved, so I think there may have been a some projection happening as well.

Yep, the first week of Steven Summer is off to a mostly fine start (sorry, 'Real Lars'). It's been great to see the Beach City residents again, but umm, five Garnet-free episodes in a row is a bit much for me.

Also, I'm really surprised that Ronaldo is allowed to hang out with the other resident teenagers. But it is a relief to see him acting with proper social cues for once.


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I've been thinking about Greg's flashback and I think in this case, he's actually remembering a pre-Rose experience. The Young Greg design is flexible enough to cover his late teens in which case Greg could be reminiscing about the late 80s (while obviously the Greg and Rose stuff took place in the 90s).

That aside, this was a fun episode and interesting use of Stevonnie (being that they are as much a vehicle for Steven and Connie as the hot wheels the character drove this very episode). Bringing back Kevin was an inspired choice too, the perfect antagonist whom is both strong enough to fulfil their role without dominating the episode's short runtime. The feedback seemed to be that it was disappointing to an extent Kevin wasn't more fleshed out (a similar fan reaction was given to Marty earlier in Drop Beat Dad) but imo, some people in life are just jerks. From either lack of perspective or obstinate refusal to engage or plain apathy, some people find it extremely easy to wake up and make the deal with themselves to be antagonistic and not extend a hand. Being civil is easy, but being nice I'm willing to admit, is not so much.

Not only does that make being mean tempting, but it becomes even more so if you find being mean personally amusing. It says a lot about Kevin for instance that he targets a small, crummy beach town for drag racing instead of a more popular area, and that detail was really all you needed to know about him.

But enough about him. The bulk of what should be spoken about here was the animation. Once again, Florido and Zuke display a keen eye for detail and use of inspiring visuals to build the story (the CGI of the cars for instance was greatly employed as an effect and shout out). Kudos to them for this fun interlude.

Yeah I thought the whole Steven hating Kevin and Steven wondering why Connie really doesn't was almost unlike him. I get he's really angry for the way Kevin treated Stevonnie, calling them "baby", and calling the residents of beach city "garbage" probably really angered him a lot too! We've seen Steven lose it a couple times with Lars, and even had some anger towards the gems at times, but never hatred.

However, we know Lars has good in him, and Steven does too. Maybe this shows that Steven can see exactly who a person is, and there wasn't any good in Kevin. Steven just needed to learn to not let it bother him, which is a good message!

I thought both Connie and Steven were really out of character. It's not like him to get so angry. He actually said he hated Kevin. This is Steven, our sweet summer child, we're talking about! I also thought it was weird that both of them saw nothing wrong with taking Greg's car without permission to enter a race without ever driving before. They could have wrecked and got seriously hurt or destroyed the car. Neither Steven nor Connie are the type to do things like this.