Relationship Analysis: Sour Cream’s Family
I had a lot of feelings coming off watching Drop Beat Dad, and I thought it would be best to explore those feelings through analysing the relationship among the different characters of Sour Cream’s family. Given there are 12 possible 1-on-1 relationships, and 4 relationships involving three characters, and 1 relationship involving all four family members. Math aside, that’s a lot of possible relationships to talk about and for this analysis, I’ll be talking about the ones pertinent to the episode.
So to avoid further boring anyone with numbers, let’s get to it.
1. Vidalia has probably been very neutral about Marty to Sour Cream
The first shot of the episode has Sour Cream cheerfully greeting his mother. And this is one of the indicators we have of his relationship with Vidalia. SC effects a very cool personality. In Onion Friend, when he’s in the zone, he just put up a hand to acknowledge Steven’s presence. But he has a soft spot for his mother, and we can see why. In Drop Beat Dad, Marty hasn’t been around to see SC grow up for at the very least nine years. That’s a long time, and that’s only the time after SC hit his growth spurt. There could be more years than that.
But SC greets Marty pretty excitedly. In fact, Steven has a more negative reaction to Marty than SC himself. Marty knows he has a son, and Marty is fully aware he’d abandoned SC and Vidalia all these years. SC doesn’t seem tense or uncomfortable around Marty, though.
One thing that people have brought up is why it seemed Marty was never forced to take responsibility for SC and Vidalia. He came all the way to Beach City to pay Greg his royalty check, but one popular post that has come up is why he hadn’t paid for welfare or anything of the sort.
Well, there’s a very strong possibility that Vidalia didn’t want to accept any sort of support from Marty. This was her attitude towards him in Onion Friend:
Amethyst: I can't believe how long it's been! I mean, check this guy out! I used to be bigger than him! *laughs, then sighs* Do you ever hear from ol' Farty Marty?
Vidalia: Him? *laughs* I dunno where that fool is! Don't care either. It's just been me and Yellowtail for a while now. *screen zooms in on her wedding ring*
Vidalia doesn’t like Marty. Given the way Amethyst addressed him, she’s probably talked about with Vidalia a couple of times while they were hanging out. In fact, because it was one of the first things Ame brought up, it was probably a significant part of Vidalia’s life when Ame and Vidalia had started to become friends. This was right after Marty got Vidalia pregnant; he drove away and Greg was just settling in Beach City, getting to know the gems and getting the gems to interact with him as a human being.
Amethyst was always curious about human beings; we see as much in Story for Steven.
In the next few weeks, Greg would go around Beach City and meet new people. In fact, one of the first residents he’d met was Vidalia, when she came out of the van with Marty. So after she’d found out she was pregnant, they’d hit it off, probably bonding over how awful Marty was. And Amethyst would tag along.
After the anger passed, Vidalia is pretty apathetic. She doesn’t like him, but she doesn’t want to know where he is or how he’s doing. She doesn’t care. There was probably a point in time in which she called up Marty and told him, and Marty, being Marty, tried to placate her for a while, make promises, things like what we’d seen in Drop Beat Dad. In the end though, Vidalia, being the quick-thinking person she is, let him go and wanted nothing to do with him. And that’s the answer she gives Amethyst.
I include the next part of their dialogue because it’s clear Vidalia didn’t settle for Yellowtail. She chose him, and she’s happy with her choice. She stands by it.
Amethyst: Whaaaat? Yellowtail?
Vidalia: Yeah, things just kinda happen. *points at young Sour Cream and baby Onion's photo* Next thing, you know, I'm living with a fisherman. Hahah, you should see your face right now.
She endearingly calls him a fisherman, she’s had another child with him, and they’re happy together.
Vidalia is a strong woman. She wouldn’t have needed to be with someone. I’m rather certain she could have raised Sour Cream on her own, but she feels more fulfilled when she’s with YT. That’s great for her. Again, she’s not going to let what happened with Marty define her life.
And that’s probably why she doesn’t bring up all his awfulness when she talks to SC about him. Resentment only breeds more resentment. She doesn’t want to burden SC with a fight that isn’t his. For all Vidalia knew, Marty would never come back into their lives after he left the first time, which we know is sometime after SC was born. Even then, he most likely didn’t stay for long periods. He’d be here then gone and the cycle would repeat until Marty finally dropped out of SC’s life sometime around nine years ago.
So SC doesn’t have memories of Marty being awful, because Marty was never there. He believes his “dad” is a busy man in the music world, and he knows nothing about those two things. And this would explain his “fact” that 80% of all Germans make a living as DJs.
Vidalia most definitely told SC about what Marty did, because their family is very honest with one another. But she’s not going to unload her emotional baggage on him. She’s going to raise her son right and that’s all that matters. That may also be why she was drawn to YT in the first place, which leads to the next point.
2. Yellowtail and Sour Cream communicate a lot
