Cowboy Bebop Session 15: My Funny Valentine

Who is Faye Valentine? Since her introduction way back in “Honky Tonk Women,” we’ve learned almost nothing about who she is or where she comes from, save her claim that she is descended from the Romani. Although, seeing as how she is a bit of a liar and a cheat, and that she made the claim as part of a desperate plea for freedom, the truthfulness of the claim has always been in question. What we know about her now is that she is a cynical, hypocritical woman who will screw over even her friends in an effort to avoid being screwed over by them first. Is this a defense mechanism, resulting from a terrible experience? Or is she just ruthless? What is her “true self”? What if she didn’t know herself?

The first half of “My Funny Valentine” is an extended flashback, resulting from Faye telling Ein a story about her past. Thinking she is alone with a dog that can’t repeat what she’s about to say, she launches into a tale of woe about how she was cryogenically frozen for nearly 100 years and awoke without any memories of who she was. She awakes to find a strange world in which she has no friends, outdated knowledge of social norms and technological advances, and mountains of debt. Whoever had her frozen assumed that she would be able to foot the bill for the expensive procedure upon awaking.

Fortunately, she meets someone who will guide her through this strange new world(s): Whitney Haggis Matsumoto, an attorney assigned to her case to help her pay off her debt. When her new life as an indebted outcast seems (justifiably) overwhelming, Whitney is there to reassure her that she’ll find a way to get by. He acts like a prince from a fairy tale to her (appropriate, as his pet name for her is Sleeping Beauty), comforting her, buying her clothes, and showing her the ins and outs of her new society. We are shown these acts in montage, while a half sappy, half sweet song plays, and with each passing scene, the two look more and more in love. But then tragedy strikes, and Whitney dies saving Faye’s life. Making matters worse, Faye inherited all of Whitney’s debt.

Without a safety net or guide, Faye had to find a way to get by, and the lying, cheating cynic that we have come to know is the result. Faye’s personality in the flashbacks couldn’t be more different from her in the present; she is physically and emotionally frail and can barely believe what is happening to her. At one point, she even exclaims that she is simply dreaming. In the three years between then and now, Faye has turned into a very capable person who approaches the world with a “seen-it-all” attitude and assumes that everyone is out to exploit her in some way.

When the tale comes to an end, Spike walks out of the bathroom, revealing he’d heard the whole thing, and he obviously does not believe her. But then Jet appears after capturing a bounty head whose M.O. was acting as a Don Juan type to con women: Whitney Haggis Matsumoto. Faye begins to question him about why he did what he did to her and who she really is. To this day, she still does not remember who she was before being frozen, and the question still eats away at her. When a police ship arrives to pick up Whitney, Faye shoves him into the Redtail in order to have more time with him to get the answers she needs. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have them; the gate accident destroyed numerous records, including her hospital documents, so no one knows who she really is. She briefly reverts to her immediately-post-unfreezing personality, breaking down crying that she doesn’t have a past, and thus no identity.

The idea of whether our memories make up who we are is remarked upon in the episode, and it’s a very interesting question. Faye seems to believe that because she doesn’t know who she was before a certain date, she has no identity, but she doesn’t realize that she has created a new one. She may not be the person she once was, but her post-unfreezing memories have created a lean, mean, bounty hunting machine. Her past is only 3 years long, but a firm identity has been created. While it’s hard to say whether we are our memories or not, they undoubtedly help create who we are, as we learn from our experiences and base our actions on our triumphs and our mistakes. Faye learned very quickly that people exist who will try to take advantage of her, and she adjusted her attitude accordingly.

Up next: Jet narrates, saying that the next episode is depressing and won’t interest children, women, or young men. But older men will be right at home watching Bebop’s most noirish episode yet.

Cowboy Bebop Session 14: Bohemian Rhapsody

Coming off two of the greatest Cowboy Bebop episodes the show would produce, we get a much more conventional episode, featuring the crew searching for a bounty-head-of-the-week. At first glance, it is nothing more than a return to the episodic nature of the series, and, in my opinion, is a kind of weak entry. Maybe it’s because it comes right after the brilliant “Jupiter Jazz,” but “Bohemian Rhapsody” has never been one of my favorite episodes. However, underneath the main story, the show’s important themes of revenge and letting the past go are very present. And we also learn a little more about the show’s history, specifically the gate accident that has caused so much trouble in the solar system.

“Bohemian Rhapsody” begins with Spike, Jet, and Faye each capturing a low-level hood. They each bring in their respective target in a manner reflecting their personality; Spike gently gets the attention of his guy before punching him out, Faye sneaks up behind hers and uses a strange spray to knock him out before he sees her, and Jet awaits his prey at the top of an escalator, looking intimidating. These hoods were all involved in some elaborate robbery from the corporation controlling the hyperspace gates. Unfortunately for the crew, none of them capture the mastermind behind the scheme, and are therefore ineligible to claim the reward. The only clues they get as to the identity and whereabouts of the mastermind are chess kings found on each of the mooks.

The crew pools their knowledge of the case in an effort to collect the substantial bounty offered by the gate corporation, which they could certainly use. Spike breaks their TV after Big Shot informs them they can’t collect the bounty and their fan randomly shorts out. The crew hasn’t captured a bounty (on-screen, anyway) since “Ganymede Elegy,” and they are probably hurting for cash. The crew figures out that the hoods all received instructions from a strange manual written by someone with extensive knowledge of the gate’s operating system, and they suspect an insider. Meanwhile, Ed discovers that the chess pieces are nothing more than memory cards which allow her to store data for and play an online chess game against a mysterious opponent.

This episode presents strong support for my dislike of Ed. She will eventually play an important role thematically, but to me, it serves more to reinforce and reflect Faye’s journey, rather than to give Ed a strong story of her own. And that won’t happen until the end. This episode features Ed in an important role for the first time since her introduction, and yet she still does so little to help out. She spends most of her time playing the chess game; at one point, she is asked to do some hacking, but rebuffs the request, stating that she is extremely busy. And at the end, the crew blackmails the gate company into doing something that will only benefit Edward rather than ask for the bounty. We see some characterization built, notably that Ed cares only about fun rather than winning or profit, but that had pretty much been established. I just don’t understand the need for her character.

Anyway, anyone with a basic understanding of storytelling rules will figure out that Ed’s chess partner is the grandmaster with the bounty on his head. Spike was right that it was an inside job, as Chessmaster Hex, as he is known, was a child prodigy who worked for the gate company in his youth. However, he was let go when he pointed out some important flaws in the gate’s design and threatened to go public with his knowledge when the company refused to fix the defects. Before he left, he programmed a virus into the operating system that would activate decades later and wrote the manual allowing the low-level mooks to exploit the virus and rip off the company.

Spike, Jet, and Faye have taken pains to avoid their pasts. When confronted with them, Spike has nearly died in pursuit of revenge and Jet reverted to a controlling stalker. Meanwhile, Faye is running from loads of debt. Vicious has been consumed by revenge, and Alisa has done everything she can to continue moving forward. Clearly, Cowboy Bebop is a show that champions moving on and not living in the past. So Chessmaster Hex’s fate is rather fitting: He too was consumed by revenge, and it drove him to madness. After getting fired, he retreated to a derelict satellite populated by drugged out squatters (tying in with the “Bohemian” of the title). His revenge plot was flawless, and all he had to do was wait for it to kick in during the gates’ first scheduled maintenance. But as he grew older, his mental faculties escaped him, and by the time his master plan unfolded, he had become nothing more than a senile old man who loved playing chess. He would never realize that his raison d’etre had been fulfilled and his triumph became meaningless to him. And that’s why you should always live for today, looking to the future, not the past.

Up next: Slow piano music plays as we see a younger Faye Valentine in beautiful dresses with a handsome man. She breathlessly talks about love, wondering if someone named Whitney truly loved her. Spike and Jet are skeptical.

Cowboy Bebop Session 13: Jupiter Jazz, Part 2

How far would you go to get revenge on someone from your past? Would you put yourself in danger, knowing that even if you succeed, it could mean your death as well? Most great tales of revenge treat it as a consuming fire, destroying the revenge seeker as much as the target. Last episode, we saw how the mention of Vicious’ name could drive Spike into a mad rage that culminated with him getting shot when confronting his nemesis. Against better sense, he tried to take on Vicious even though Vicious had back-up. In “Jupiter Jazz, Part 2,” we see how two other characters deal with their desire for vengeance: Gren, against Vicious, and Vicious, against Spike.

As Spike lies dying (or so we think), we hear a voiceover of Gren, explaining his history with Vicious. Gren is a man with a compulsive need to belong. He tells Faye that he is drawn to the word “comrade” almost “to the point of tears.” I want to say that his need to belong to a group and his use of the word comrade underscores both the ties between Callisto and the U.S.S.R. and the suspicion of the government against Gren. However, Faye has also used “comrade” to describe her relationship with Spike and Jet, and I don’t know nearly enough about Japanese history with socialism and communism to know whether this was an intended commentary. (Then again, maybe the dub, which is what I’ve been watching, put the undertones in, knowing they would resonate with an American audience.) Gren had to put his life into the hands of his brothers in arms during the war, and they put theirs in his. Despite the war being hell – the flashbacks, shown in a faded pinkish hue, depict a desert planet perpetually going through a sandstorm – Gren was able to get through it with the strength given to him by his comrades.

Of course, any camaraderie with Vicious is sure to end in tears. After being the best of friends during the war, to the point of giving Gren a music box for (seemingly) no reason at all, Vicious told the interplanetary government that Gren was a spy. While in prison, Gren was given experimental drugs, throwing his hormones out of whack and giving him female features. Eventually, he escaped to Callisto, where he met Julia. She told him that the music box was some kind of poisoned gift, and sure enough, it contained a transmitter that convinced the government that he was the spy. And thus Gren’s desire for revenge was born.

Everything that we’ve seen of Vicious has proven that he’s a bad person. We know that he and Spike also used to be friends, but now they want to kill each other. Spike wants to get revenge on Vicious for what he did to Mao. So far, we’d been led to believe that Vicious just wanted to kill Spike because he could not suffer his mentor to live as a good man, but his true motivation is that Spike took Julia from him. A series of flashbacks show us their fall from friends to enemies as voiceovers from Spike, Julia, and Spike make threats and promises. Vicious may be a disconnected psychopath, but he still has some traces of humanity. Or he did at some point; it’s likely that those last traces were destroyed in his quest for power and revenge.

Meanwhile, Spike comes to, realizing that Lin simply shot him with a tranquilizer dart. He gets back in the Swordfish and begins his search for Vicious again. He receives a call from Jet, offering to let him back on the ship if Spike brings in Gren, but Spike isn’t too receptive. Jet has found Faye and is bringing her back to the Bebop. The two discuss why Faye left, why she left Swordfish and Hammerhead intact after disabling the Bebop, and the fact that the safe was practically empty when she robbed it. The two don’t get too much to do this episode aside from providing Spike a home and human connections.

However, these connections are extremely important, as they are ultimately what set Spike apart from Vicious. Last episode, Spike could not bring himself to kill Lin, a man who clearly bore Spike no loyalty and was aiding Vicious. Spike had a history with Lin and felt no ill will toward him nor was hunting him. In this episode, Vicious tries to flee after Lin is injured in a bomb blast meant for him and doesn’t grieve for an instant when Lin takes a bullet for him. To Vicious, there is no one but Vicious and the people in his way. Everyone else can go to hell.

Looking to the past can be dangerous. Dwelling on past wrongs can drive people to their destruction. Spike for the most part has tried to move on with his life, but he at times feels like he can never escape the past. He believes that he’s merely dreaming, stuck in his life before the Bebop. And we learn here that the scene at the beginning of “Sympathy for the Devil” was a flashback to him receiving a cybernetic eye, most likely due to losing his real one escaping from Vicious after leaving the Syndicate. As he says, one eye sees the past; it’s a reminder of who he was and the life he may never be able to leave behind, no matter how hard he tries.

Up next: Beat music, heavy with drums, plays over images of a chess board and pieces, as Spike speaks in metaphors, before telling the viewers to hang around and waste their lives with him in “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

Cowboy Bebop Session 12: Jupiter Jazz, Part 1

How far would you go to reconnect with someone from your past? Would you turn your back on everyone in your present? Would you set up an illegal transaction? How far would you go to escape your present? To fundamentally change it? “Jupiter Jazz, Part 1” examines the tension between a person’s desires and the effect they can have on the people around us. Sometimes the expression of the desire can be downright selfish, such as Faye’s robbing the Bebop in order to live in solitude. In other instances, the timing can be wrong; Jet would probably never be too keen on Spike hunting down his past, but he’d likely be more accepting of the fool’s errand if Spike weren’t leaving at a time when Jet needed his help. And then there are times when those around you don’t trust you…

Much of the episode is slow, sad, and contemplative, with a few fight scenes to shake up the mood. Jupiter Jazz takes place on Callisto, one of Jupiter’s moons, and it may be the most depressing place we’ve seen yet. Callisto isn’t just run down, it is a snowy wasteland populated by weary men. The moon is meant to evoke Soviet Russia, with letters of the Russian alphabet appearing on signs, sable hats, and a depressed populace. One of the stranger characteristics of the town we see is that it is inhabited solely by men. The questions of how the population is replenished, why don’t women show up, and how this come to pass are, to me, conspicuous by their absence. Instead, the show simply uses the lack of women to (1) make the Callisto town even more depressing, (2) increase the tension of Faye’s presence there, and (3) alert the audience that Spike’s mission there is a fool’s errand.

This episode sees the return of Vicious and the introduction of the leaders of the Red Dragon Syndicate. Vicious has been contacted by someone on Callisto that he knew from a war, who has expressed an interest in purchasing a large quantity of drugs. The leaders are wary of the deal, and by extension Vicious himself. They tell Vicious to bring along another gangster, Lin. Lin sees the assignment as a protection detail to keep Vicious safe, but Vicious knows that the leaders intend to spy on him. Neither side trusts the other; the elders suspect that Vicious – who, as we have seen, definitely lives up to his name – wants to overthrow them and seize power for himself. And they aren’t wrong. Vicious comments to Lin that their way of thinking is outdated, and refers to them as corpses.

It’s not hard to see why Vicious has disdain for the Red Dragon elders; from their appearance, it looks like they have barely moved in years. They are incredibly old, wrinkly, and rather out of shape. They spend their days sitting on thrones bathed in light, while Vicious addresses them almost in shadow. To Vicious, a brutal man of action, having to take orders from people who sit around and think about gang politics – and try and solve problems without violence – must be an incredible insult. It probably doesn’t help his estimation of them when they refer to him as a snake or as someone with an impossibly cold heart. Then again, they aren’t exactly wrong.

Faye is on Callisto after leaving the Bebop, seemingly for good. She left behind a note saying that it would be too hard to say goodbye in person, which pleases Spike until Jet informs him that Faye emptied out the safe and drained the coolant fluids from the engine. Jet begins a plan to pursue her, but when Ed begins tracking Faye’s movements, she learns that someone has been using the name “Julia” on Callisto. Spike perks up and immediately heads to the Swordfish. Jet desperately tries to convince Spike to help him track down Faye (or, more precisely, the money she took), but Spike coldly tells him that he is going to search for “his” woman, and that Jet is free to find “the other one.” Jet’s desperation turns to anger, and he tells Spike not to come back if he goes on his wild goose chase, leaving Jet to hunt for Faye himself. Spike continues to calmly prepare for take-off as Jet hurls insults at him. Once again, we see Spike remain calm in situations that would anger most rational men.

As we get our first glimpse of Callisto, in which we see a few skyscrapers and many dilapidated low rises bathed in a blue tint, slow saxophone music plays. This music is actually coming from a source in the episode, rather than being soundtrack over the action; Faye is in a bar called the Blue Crow, listening to a saxophone player named Gren. She sits smoking and hunched over a drink, with a sad expression on her face. She also seems to be catching a cold, which is not too surprising based on the fact that she remains dressed in her tiny shorts and half shirt, despite the moon’s weather. Gren walks over to her and gives her the Callisto equivalent of a “god bless you” when Faye sneezes. She tries to flirt with him, but he dismisses her, stating he’s not interested in women. But he suggests she be wary of all the other men in the bar, all of whom give her leering looks, which only serves to bring a smile to her face. In an effort to “work out some frustration,” she leaves the bar hoping to be pursued by the men so that she can beat them to a pulp. But before she can do too much damage to them, Gren “rescues” her. (I’m not sure why; she was doing well.)

Elsewhere, Spike tries to track down Julia. He slowly but surely gets closer to the truth, but he gets sidetracked by a gang of locals who believe him to be Vicious. Spike made the mistake of mentioning Gren’s name to the gang’s leader, who knew that a foreigner named Vicious had set up a drug deal with Gren. Calling him Vicious causes Spike to fly off the handle; he literally shakes with rage before utterly destroying the group. Spike usually enjoys fighting and almost seems to derive relaxation from the act. But here, he feels nothing but rage for being labeled as his great rival, and he spends the entire fight growling, with a look of pure rage on his face. The fight ends when Spike questions the leader; he says that “Julia” sounds like a “cheap wench’s name,” causing Spike to lay him out.

Meanwhile, Jet carries on his pursuit of Faye, and he comes to a quiet bar populated by a bartender and a sleeping (passed out?) customer. Big Shot plays in the background, informing Jet and the viewer that Gren has a significant bounty on his head. He is an escaped prisoner, and the “statute of limitations” is about to run out, so the bounty is doubled. (I’m not an expert in criminal law, but I didn’t realize that there was a statute of limitations how long the police have to recapture and escapee.) Jet begins to pull out his walkie-talkie to call Spike with the new information, then angrily puts it away and demands that the bartender turn off the show. Is he angry because he misses Spike or because he can’t track Gren and Faye simultaneously?

Speaking of which, Gren has taken Faye back to his apartment. Faye explains to him that she prefers to be alone; when she is with others, she feels isolated anyway, so she might as well actually be alone. She laments that she cares too much for others and connections complicate things too much, then says that most people only ever pay attention to her because of how she looks. When she only has to worry about herself, things are so much simpler.

She certainly has a funny way of viewing herself; she spent most of the last nine episodes intentionally annoying Spike and Jet, she stole from them more than a few times, including in this episode, and she barely pulled her weight for her first few weeks on the Bebop. And this is her definition of caring too much. She is either extremely deluded or is an expert at lying to herself. The latter doesn’t seem too far off, though. We know that she is a liar and a cheater and deceives in order to survive, so who’s to say that she doesn’t do it to herself as well?

Faye plays around with a broken music box in Gren’s home (noticing a bit of a motif?) as she says all this. Soon, he excuses himself to take a shower, and while he’s indisposed, Vicious calls to set up the meet. Justifiably terrified, Faye picks up her gun and plans to get the drop on Gren while he’s showering. But when she pulls back the curtain, she is utterly shocked to see that he has some female body parts. Utterly shocked, Gren backs her into a corner, explaining that he’s both genders simultaneously and neither at all.

At the same time, Spike tracks down Vicious and Lin. He is surprised to see the latter, and his comments indicate that Spike knew him as a child back when Spike was a Red Dragon, and that he held a bit of a mentor role to the young Lin. Vicious taunts Spike by telling him that Lin works for him now and that Julia was in town a few weeks back. Spike pulls his gun, knowing that he’ll have the upper hand with Vicious far away from him; as deadly as the man is, he solely relies on his katana. But Lin puts himself between Spike and Vicious, causing Spike to lower his weapon. Despite all of his hatred and rage, Spike could never bring himself to harm someone he cared about, even if it meant a chance at taking out his rival. Sadly, Lin’s loyalty is to Vicious and the syndicate, and he fires at Spike. The episode ends with Spike spread-eagle on the ground, looking up as snow falls.

So let’s see: Spike’s quest to reconnect with Julia has alienated Jet and resulted in him getting shot. Faye’s desire to escape her life resulted in her being pursued by her old friends and brought to the home of a man trying to reconnect with Vicious. And Vicious’ plans to remake the syndicate in his own image remains… unresolved.

Up next: Slow piano music plays over scenes of explosions and gun fights. Spike asks how men and women are different, and Faye responds that women hide more vital secrets. They begin a discussion about the nature of masculinity and femininity, which is humorously interrupted by Ed and Jet.

Cowboy Bebop Session 11: Toys in the Attic

“Toys in the Attic” is kind of a strange episode. There is no bounty-head-of-the-week, the plot is a riff on containment horror films (especially Alien), we don’t quite get a resolution, and the characters out and out tell us exactly how they see (or don’t see) the world around them. It’s fun and funny, but it definitely feels off. If I had to guess, I’d say that the writers wanted a breather episode before the big two-part season finale.
The episode is punctuated by voiceovers from each of the crew members (minus Ein) and the ship’s computer, each providing the episode’s lesson (or the lesson of the episode as of when they speak to us). At the beginning, Jet’s voiceover occurs during a scene of himself playing dice against Faye. He explains to us that there are no bounty heads on their radar, and he has resorted to trying to earn some quick cash.
The poor man has lost nearly everything he owns to her, including his bonsai tree and his clothes. Upset that he now has to scrounge around the ship for clothing, Jet proclaims that the lesson of the episode is that man was meant to work and sweat to earn a living. Those who would try to take a shortcut to money or take advantage of others in order to survive will be met with divine retribution. This is definitely the kind of thing Jet, a man who both tries to see people as innately good and makes his living capturing those who take advantage of others, would believe. He quickly admits that too often, we forget this lesson and have to learn it all over again. Especially when people get desperate, like Jet does here. Despite knowing that Faye is a notorious cheater, he plays against her when money gets low in order to get a little quick cash.
Of course, Faye’s lesson, stated while she justifies her cheating to Spike, is much more cynical. To her, life mercilessly forces people to adhere to the concept of “only the strong survive,” and if you aren’t taking advantage of others, they will take advantage of you. Taking advantage of a man who is supposed to have her back in dangerous situations seems to itself be dangerous – she depends on him when her life is in peril, so she probably shouldn’t be antagonizing him. At the very least, it was rather cruel, but Faye sees her actions only as “enterprising” and compromises with Spike by agreeing to rent Jet’s clothes back to him. Faye’s actions appear to us as extremely cold and greedy, but now with the benefit of her voiceover, and thus the ability to know exactly what she’s thinking, we know that she fervently believes that what she’s doing will keep her alive and safe. This doesn’t undo the selfishness or greed, but it gives us some sympathy for her, because something likely happened to her to make her fear for her safety so much that she would resort to deceiving her own friends in an effort to ensure that no one deceives her.
Before we get to the next lesson, let’s address the main plot of the episode. The cold open featured a POV shot of something as it scurried through the bowels of the Bebop. Whatever it is sees only the color red and is very small, the viewpoint is barely above the floor. Ominous percussion sounds play over the title card. The elements evoke the atmosphere of a horror movie, and the show continues by keeping the music to a minimum (and reusing the same ominous sounds for later creature POV shots) and focusing on Ein’s penchant for pointing out threats to the crew. Ein, the animal on the ship, is the only thing that initially realizes there is a problem, while the human crew members ignore his warning barks.
The (human) crew begins to realize there is a problem when Jet notices a fridge hidden in the back of a store room and then gets bitten by a mysterious, unseen creature. Spike tries to help him out with his first aid kit, comprised of nothing but bizarre alternative “herbal” medicine. Spike and Faye debate the effectiveness of crushed lizards, and then debate what exactly the horrible medicine smells like, as Jet feels himself getting sicker just thinking about ingesting the medicine. Unfortunately, the medicine doesn’t work, and Jet passes out. The debate next turns to what could have bitten Jet.
Using the crew’s all-purpose analyzing machine (capable of scanning everything from computer chips to tissue samples), Spike can’t seem to pinpoint the origin of the poison in Jet’s system. Ed, in an inappropriately upbeat voice, suggests that they have an alien on the ship. Spike and Faye point out that this is impossible, but have no explanations of their own. Spike tries to think of a plausible explanation involving some sort of mutated rat, but even he does not believe it. But when Faye gets bitten, Spike begins to get really worried. Ed remains giddy and loud. And before passing out, Faye moans about the unfairness of bad things happening to her. (She complains that she hasn’t committed any crimes… or at least any bad ones.)
Spike and Ed put on some infrared goggles to hunt down the creature, but Ed is more interested in goofing around. Her “lesson” is that, if you should see a stranger, follow him. This reflects Ed’s complete ability to live in the moment and her warped sense of the world. There is very little Ed fears; in previous episodes, we’ve seen her giddily remotely pilot the ship belonging to the police who have come to arrest her and climb on a chained up but rough-looking bounty head. Here, while hunting for a mysterious creature that has taken out two of her adult companions, she couldn’t be happier to track it down just for the fun of it. Never mind that it’s dangerous; right now she has to find it, and she’ll happily follow anything new if she thinks it will lead to her having a good time. This does not go well for her.
It’s not long before Spike remains the last man standing. Seeing his cohorts passed out in the main room, he gets a determined look on his face and gets an action hero moment in which we see close-ups of all the weapons he straps to himself. This short montage ends with him taking a bite of burnt shish-kabob and spitting it out. In addition to the horror elements, the episode provides many comedic moments, usually in the midst of a tense scene, to lighten up the atmosphere. In the previous scene, Spike found a bitten Ein in a corridor, saw a blob through his infrared, and ran away, as the ominous music played. Unfortunately, during his escape, he fell down a ladder shaft.
The climax itself is equal turns hilarious and horrific. It turns out that the creature is the result of Spike leaving a lobster in the fridge for too long and allowing the leftovers to mutate into an entire ecosystem. His desperate attempt to flush the fridge out of the Bebop’s airlock caps off the Alien references and leads into an extended 2001: A Space Odyssey riff, complete with classical music, a spinning obelisk-like item (the fridge), and the crew floating in zero gravity on the ship.
As the episode closes, Spike says that the lesson is that you should never leave food in the refrigerator for too long. Although this sounds silly, this is probably the best lesson for the episode and the perfect lesson to sum up Spike’s personality. Both Jet and Faye presented strict worldviews, which can be argued against. Ed spouted nonsense. Spike’s lesson applied directly to the episode: leaving food in the fridge is exactly what caused all the trouble. And furthermore, the lesson was situational, rather than an all-encompassing viewpoint. Spike, the improviser and adapter, focused on the situation at hand. It’s likely that if every episode featured lesson voiceovers, Jet’s and Faye’s would be very similar over the course of the series, with some slight adjustments as they learn new things (Faye especially), but Spike’s would be wildly different each time.
Up next: Like I said, there isn’t much of a resolution here; we are left not knowing how the crew got over their bites. And so the preview for “Jupiter Jazz, Part 1” begins with Ed solemnly stating that they all died and the series ended. She thanks us for watching, then informs us that we’ll soon be able to watch a great new show called Cowgirl Edward. All of this is being said over sad saxophone music, as we shots of a snowy town, Vicious and members of the Red Dragon syndicate, and Spike fighting dudes. Spike and Faye angrily interrupt Ed to tell us that she’s lying and that Bebop will go on. Jet flatly gives the name of the next episode.

Cowboy Bebop Session 10: Ganymede Elegy

Who is Jet Black? How did he go from being a cop in what seems to be the equivalent of a federal police force (he worked for the Intra-Solar System Police, rather than the police force of a specific city or planet) to being a bounty hunter partnered with an ex-gangster? There have been hints about corruption on the force, and Jet certainly puts forth an honorable façade. But it’s just as clear that he can get dirty when he has to (blackmailing an ex-colleague) and isn’t quite sure about how honorable the world he lives in is. And then there are the instances of misogyny. Neither Spike nor Jet get along with Faye, but while Spike’s feelings about her are rooted in her character, Jet attributes her negative aspects to all women. Compare Spike’s comment in this episode about how not all women are like Faye to Jet’s behavior toward her in the last few episodes. He tries to tell her that betrayal comes much easier to women than to men then complains about how he’s not one to be led around by a woman.

And so we come to “Ganymede Elegy,” one of my favorite episodes of Cowboy Bebop and the first to explore Jet’s history in-depth. Ganymede, one of Jupiter’s moons, is Jet’s home, and he returns there for the first time in nearly a decade when the crew turns in a bounty head to the I.S.S.P. station on Ganymede. As they approach the moon, Jet is distracted and does little more than gaze at a stopped pocket watch (with a face that goes to 15). A flashback, done in very muted blues and grays, shows us a woman walking away in the rain and Jet, in silhouette, standing in the doorway of a small room. He sees the pocket watch on the bed, along with a note. As the woman turns to face the camera, we cut back to the present, where Spike and Faye remind Jet that he’s flying the Bebop and should probably pay attention, especially as they begin the landing process.

Faye jokingly asks whether Jet was thinking about a woman, causing Jet to angrily snap at her, but that only makes her want to needle him further. Their arguing is interrupted by a transmission from I.S.S.P. Agent Donnelly, an old colleague of Jet’s. The two are happy to see each other, but Donnelly can barely believe that Jet “The Black Dog” Black would become a bounty hunter. He then asks Jet about a woman named Elisa, and at the mention of the name, all of Jet’s sadness comes rushing back. Donnelly tells Jet that Elisa now runs a bar and how to find it.

From there, the episode focuses almost exclusively on Jet, Elisa, and Rhint, her boyfriend. Aside from the aforementioned conversation with Spike about the nature of women, Faye does little more in this episode than sun herself on the deck of the Bebop. Ed and Ein join her for some leisure time. Spike has a role to play in the climax, but we’ll get to that later.

As expected, Jet and Elisa used to be lovers, but one night, Jet came home from work and found the pocket watch and note, but no Elisa. When Jet shows up in her bar, she is surprised, but not necessarily unhappy to see him, and they catch up. Elisa tells a surprised Jet that she and Rhint, a nervous man who Jet met upon entering the bar, are dating. When she asks if he is married, he laughs and says that he’s just traveling around with “some weirdos.”

But their conversation has darker moments as well. Donnelly had said that “the recession” was making it tough for people to make it on Ganymede (although he specifically said “women”), and one of the first things Elisa told Jet was that he would be her final customer, because she was in the process of closing down. Her bar certainly had a look of dilapidation about it, but that didn’t necessarily set it apart from the rest of the village. Elisa and Rhint live in a harbor town, and many of the buildings and ships look like they’ve seen much better days. Elisa also comments that ships don’t come into port nearly as often as they used to.

I don’t think that I’ve seen this episode since watching The Wire, but “Ganymede Elegy” is in some ways a 24-minute version of The Wire’s second season. Both that season and this episode focus on ports that can barely sustain the people working them, and show how far some people will go to maintain their lives. The Wire followed stevedore union treasurer Frank Sobotka as he got in too deep with local drug smugglers in the name of keeping his fellow stevedores employed. He was basically a good person who felt driven to dealing with people he despised in order to maintain the only life he knew and the only life his coworkers knew. He and the other stevedores grew up just above the poverty line and never learned how to be anything but stevedores. Their choices were not ideal, and they knew it, but they felt that they had no other choice.

Elisa and Rhint are in a similar situation. They wanted to pursue the “American dream” (“Ganymedian dream”?) of living their lives in the way they desire. Elisa wants to run a bar, and she tries to do so. She probably wanted her bar to be on Ganymede, because that is her home, but it’s just as likely that she couldn’t afford to leave. She suggests to Jet that she’ll leave Ganymede after closing the bar, but it’s very likely this is a last resort to both her life in general and a specific situation in her life. Unfortunately, things beyond her control forced her to take money from a loan shark to keep the bar running, and when he came to collect, things went from bad to worse. In a flashback, we see the loan shark and his goons threatening Elisa and Rhint before Rhint gets the upper hand and kills the leader in self-defense. The shooting leads to the police putting a bounty on Rhint’s head, a fact Donnelly clandestinely gives Spike.

As Jet and Elisa catch up, Jet randomly asks her whether she has gotten in over her head. The question comes without prompt, but it says volumes about their relationship and their personalities. Jet couches the question in an explanation about how banks aren’t too understanding about unpaid mortgages, even in a recession. But it’s clear he’s trying to “look out” for Elisa, even though he hasn’t been a part of her life for seven years. He comments that when she left him, time felt like it stopped, like he only dreamed she had gone (and his lines echo Spike’s repeated references to living in a dream he can’t wake up from, starting from the traumatic event of his past that led him to the Bebop).

Elisa, however, is offended both at Jet’s continuing attempts to “look out” for her and his statement that time stopped, despite them clearly being a metaphor. To her, time never stops; it continues and forces people to either continue with it or watch from the sidelines. Her desire to continue her life is what drove the two apart. Jet always took care of everything for her, effectively rendering her a child without a life of her own. With him looking out for her, she never had to make a choice, never got to learn from her mistakes. In a sense, her life stopped, and she couldn’t bear it as the world continued around her.

The episode’s climax involved Spike hunting down Rhint for the bounty on his head. He finds them fleeing in a small jet-powered boat as he flies over the bay in the Swordfish. As he tries to bring them in, he coldly tells them that turning them into the police is “just business.” But Jet appears in the Hammerhead and tells Spike to go back to the Bebop and let him finish this alone. Spike is hesitant, thinking Jet will let his old girlfriend go, but Jet assures him that he’s the Black Dog, and won’t let anything go once he’s gotten his teeth into it.

When Jet finally disables their boat and corners them, the episode does a great job of showing Jet as a terrifying, Terminator-esque figure, slowly walking toward his prey, his face half in shadow, as Elisa and Rhint futilely try to run. And in the end, Rhint is unable to escape the Black Dog’s jaws. I’ll admit that I think Elisa acted a bit too understanding of Jet turning in Rhint right after giving a tearful monologue explaining why she had to leave him. Jet tells her that he’ll probably get off on a self-defense argument, but he and his partner still hunted down her boyfriend solely for profit. In a 180 degree turn from their actions in the past two episodes, Spike and Jet treated Rhint like nothing more than a price tag, despite knowing that he and Elisa are not bad people and that they were only protecting themselves when Rhint committed the crime for which he earned his bounty. Some days Spike and Jet are men of honor. Some days, they need to get paid, even if they have to compromise their values. Just like Sobotka. Just like Elisa.

Up next: In what is (I’m pretty sure) the only episode preview not narrated by a character on the show, “Toys in the Attic” is presented as a horror movie trailer, complete with a generic male voice speaking in snappy sentences about the horrors to come.