Most of its own fans seem to agree the first season is a complete slog.
The episode that I think really threw me off the show with Steven's character is still cheeseburger backpack. It always felt like the showrunners could never agree on the age demographic they wanted him to represent. By his age, my friends and I sat around playing Halo and talking about sportsball. He's at the age where the average kid would be too insecure for something like sportsball because it's the "superficial maturity" years.
It made him feel almost alien to me as a protagonist because of having him subvert "toxic masculinity", I think they pushed him to the point he was never allowed to have the kinds of insecurities and character flaws that boys his age would have and thus he always leaned either Jesus-y or like he was 7