I loved/still love Steven Universe, even with its faults, and if I had a chance to rewrite it I'd carry more of the monster-of-the-week battles into the later seasons (so it doesn't feel like a bait and switch,) have them go back and forth to Homeworld towards the end like Rebecca wanted before CN cancelled the show and gave them like 7 episodes to wrap up everything, and at the very end, you NEED Beach City and the residents to matter. You spend all the filler episodes getting to know these humans, give them a reason to have had all that time. Steven cares because he cares about everyone; he's half human, beach city is his human home while Homeworld is technically his gem home. If the final battle was brought to Earth somehow, and the Beach City residents actually came together and did SOMETHING, even if it was ultimately small, that'd matter so much. Have everyone sing the theme song as they go into battle, like in the pilot/flashback SDCC music video thing. Have that human connection MATTER!!
I also, personally, just don't like Lapis very much. She's so morose and antisocial, and I get she's gone through a lot but every fucking gem has gone through a lot. She doesn't need to be transformed into a genki girl, but if she could just not be such a sulk in literally every appearance...idk. And yeah, her night palette WAS better than the "main" palette she kept. Looked more like actual lapis lazuli. (also ffs I'd fix the pronunciation of Lazuli and Peridot, I hate how the show says them.)
Feel like the human/gem balance of relevance would have been fixed if they'd let Greg or someone else be more involved with the Crystal Gems. Maybe have Connie come on a little earlier or have townies that come into conflict with the gems who aren't a complete joke like Ronaldo. Shows like Gravity Falls and even Danny Phantom and Fairly Oddparents had a pretty good mix of human/supernatural conflict.
Maybe don't have every human character besides Greg, Connie, or god forbid Lars have abosutely no consequence to the plot.
Anyway something nice about SU and a lot of shows around this time, like Gravity Falls, Adventure Time, Regular Show, they were great vibe shows. They had fun casts of characters and visually pleasant and relatable settings. Showrunners would include their hobbies and interests which is why we got so much retro 80s content from Regular show or references to the Gameboy Advance in SU.
Episodes where you got to hang out with the characters were a treat, which is why so many people hate the town episodes of Steven Universe, NONE of the townies are fun to hang out with, there's too many of them to begin with and none of them are fleshed out enough to care about.
I want to hang out with the gems and watch them get up to science fiction shenanigans. My favorite episodes of Steven Universe were the barn episodes and the shorty squad because we got to spend time with the gems in ordinary situations, but there was still character development happening and the plot was advancing slightly. That's the good stuff. That's binge worthy television.
To go along with that Steven Universe also has a pretty good escalation with its villains, we go from Lapis who isn't really a villain, Peridot who hints towards something bigger on the horizon, Jasper who hands the Crystal Gems their first defeat, to eventually the actual diamonds.
Like a lot of things from last decade it had loads of potential but was fumbled in one way or another and became a mixed bag. I don't think it's really worth a lot of the hate it got, especially from E;R or Lily Orchard, but it is a time capsule to that exciting time in animation and fandom, and I think that alone has merit.
