SapphiCine
Member
It's a bunch of little things. Some are related to that - like, really, Amethyst never learned there was more than one kindergarten? Bismuth really threw me, though. Not that the gems have really fond memories of this other gem that nobody's ever mentioned and who hasn't shown up in flashbacks of the war, so much, but the premise of the episode is just really implausible. Everyone already knows that Lion is associated with Rose. Everyone knows that Lion's got access to a bunch of stuff Rose hid or stashed away. Pearl in particular has been really strongly affected by stuff coming out of Lion's mane, like the sword and standard. Steven's apparently in and out of there all the time for things as trivial as drinks, and he'd seen Bismuth's bubble before and I'm pretty sure had even told the other gems that a bubble was in there (also Pearl has historically exhibited a weird attachment to another Rose bubble). None of the gems ever thought it might be important to take an inventory of what's in Lion's mane? Steven never thought to ask any of the gems about the weird stuff he's seen in there?
Edit: And similarly, nobody seems to stop and ask why Bismuth was bubbled in Lion's mane.
Those are all very good points. When you get down to it, the Crystal Gems have a really low capacity for critical thinking when it is convenient.I just don't buy it. And definitely not with Garnet around. I mean, I expect it was really really obvious to every viewer that Bismuth was bad news, and that took like 2 minutes. I don't think that that was only story cues. You pretty much immediately go from "Rose bubbled and hid Bismuth" to wondering "why did Rose bubble and hide Bismuth?" Unless these characters are supposed to be seriously questioning Rose's judgment (which maybe they should be, but mostly they're not) the presumption here has got to be that Rose had a good reason for that. You don't suspend your worries for a day to hang out with the huge potential threat that just showed up and then leave her alone with what is in some sense a highly vulnerable form of the person that is responsible for her being trapped in a bubble for thousands of years.
With Bismuth, I think the writers had the climax and then worked backwards. Even with a full 22 minutes they still ended up cutting corners.