Summer of Steven - The New Lars Review

In "The New Lars", Steven is at the Big Donut shop asking Lars and Sadie who is better - the Koala, or the Sloth. Lars is just being Lars and is rude as usual, going as far as to refusing Sadie's offer to hangout at her place. Steven then tries to convince Lars to go to Sadie, but Lars tells him off.

That night, Steven in his sleep, wishes to help change Lars so he and Sadie can finally be together, when he wakes up in Lars's body. Obviously a new power. Realizing this, Steven, in Lars's body, does several changes to make Lars more likable by everyone.

Steven, still is Lars's body, visits Sadie and the two hang out. When Steven, as Lars, expresses his love for Sadie, the whole thing backfires and Steven had to let it out that it was him all along. The two then realized that Lars may be in Steven's body and they rushed back to the temple, with Lars's family and gang following suit.

We then see Steven's body still lying in bed and remains in a sleep state. Steven, in Lars's body wakes him up and the two switched themselves back. Lars screamed in panic when he finds out what happened.

In the aftermath, Steven apologized for what happened to a miserable Lars, but the latter then was anxious on Sadie's reaction when Steven said he, as Lars, loved her. Sadie arrives and Lars acts like his usual self, and Sadie was glad it's the real Lars. Lars then asks Sadie out and the episode ends.

This is perhaps my least favorite of the episodes for this event because it explores something that's been done before a number of times already - that of Sadie and Lars. We get it. Sadie LOVES Lars and vice versa, but Lars is playing the 'Mordecai'* and we see this happen yet again. It's starting to get awfully annoying and this should really be over with.

* a reference to the term used in Regular Show where Mordecai fails to express his feelings for Margaret, and later CJ, because of his insecurities.

The only reason it seems we're getting this episode is to demonstrate yet another one of Steven's new power, which is entering and controlling other people's bodies. I suspect this is something Steven will likely be doing in a future story arc, along with the rest of his newfound powers. This would've worked if we're still in the first season, but this is the 3rd season now (or originally, the 2nd half of the 2nd season) and a few years have passed, so this just doesn't work for me anymore.

I do give kudos to Lars's voice actor, Matthew Moy, who had to pretend that Lars is Steven in this episode and he pretty much nails it there. There's also a couple of neat stuff you see in some of the background images. In the scene where Steven (as Lars) looks over the numerous titles, the word 'Hell' in 'Hellhound' is omitted by the $1 sign. Obviously, it's because of a policy that such words like God, Devil, Hell, and the like are not allowed in a kids cartoon. There's even references to the Evil Dead and Robocop franchises.

Still, this is a weak episode, because it explores what we know already and still ends with a tease, rather than a resolution. Which also means somewhere down the road we will have another episode like this. I do hope the next time they do this, they really get it over with, once and for all.