The Other Worlds

Cowboy Bebop Session 25 & 26: The Real Folk Blues, Parts 1 & 2

2012-01-28T16:30:00.001-06:00

What good does holding on to the past do? Faye and Ed both got nothing but pain for trying to recapture theirs. When Jet tried to reconnect with Elisa, he learned more about himself then he wanted to. And when Jet tried to reconnect with his old partner, he learned more about him than he wanted to. Then there is Spike. He has spent the entire series claiming he had already died and that he’s just watching a dream he can’t wake up from. He’s not suicidal, but he’s in no hurry to go out of his way to preserve his life either… unless he thinks he can reconnect with the mysterious Julia. He sought out Mao Yenrai’s killer, despite knowing that he was most likely walking into a trap, and he went to Jupiter to find Julia, with his only lead being the fact that the name “Julia” was being used in some run-down town.

The difference between the characters is how they react to these developments. Ed and Jet learn from their mistakes; Ed realizes that she has to look forward, while Jet ignores his past as best he can. He uses the past to his advantage if he can, such as choosing a mechanical arm to ensure he always remembers the lessons his mistakes have taught him, but generally focuses on the present. Faye has a hard time letting go of the past, and trades one for the other when she returns to the Bebop because she has nowhere else to go. But the Bebop also holds a future for her, especially now that she has dropped her cynical and selfish personality traits. She initially tells the others, and herself, that she comes back to deliver a message to Spike, but she could have easily done that by phone. She is familiar with the Bebop, and believes that it’s the only place she belongs. It doesn’t hurt that Spike is there, and she has grown to love him. Unfortunately she fell for the man who just can’t let the past go. Once again, when a lead on Julia presents itself, he can’t pass it up. Even if it means he’ll probably die.

In Spike’s world, with Julia must come Vicious, and the very reason Julia has resurfaced is because Vicious attempted to stage a coup against the leaders of the Red Dragon Syndicate. When it failed, the Elders put hits out on everyone ever connected with Vicious, including Spike and Julia. Vicious is an interesting case. Unlike Spike, who goes through the motions of life and has no greater ambitions than getting something to eat, Vicious has big plans and intends on running the Red Dragons. As has been established, he and the elders have a difference of opinion on how the syndicate should be run, and he wants to do everything he can to ensure his view wins and that he becomes the new leader. He has tremendous foresight and he looks to the future, unlike his rival. But his great downfall is that he does share Spike’s fatal flaw: as much as Vicious is forward-thinking, he just can’t let Spike or Julia go. Even when his coup eventually succeeds, due to his ability to predict the behavior of his enemies, he chooses not to call off the hit on Spike and Julia. And when Julia dies, he knows that Spike will come to him for a final showdown. The thought makes him the closest emotion to happy that Vicious can feel.

No other episode lays on thematic elements of “the past” thicker than “The Real Folk Blues.” It’s on everyone’s minds, and each approach it differently. Jet wishes people wouldn’t hang so much meaning on it. Faye accepts that she has to take what is available to her, even if it isn’t ideal. Julia wants to leave it all behind and run away. And Spike and Vicious can’t see reason. They are too blinded by what has happened to move forward with their friends. Even when Vicious gets everything he wants, it’s not enough; Spike must dies. Even when Spike loses everything that mattered to him in his old life, he can’t realize that he has a new life with people who want to be with him. All he can do is seek revenge. The saddest part is that no other moment in the series so perfectly shows that, underneath their indifference and insults, Spike and Jet really do get along as friends, and that Faye does feel like she wants to be with Spike. Sometimes, people can’t see what’s right in front of them because they are too focused elsewhere. And in this case, the consequences for doing so are grave.

The final preview, for “Part 2,” showed nothing but images of Spike and Julia together in a cemetery, as Spike and Jet talked about what they learned over the course of the series. Faye mumbles philosophy, completely unaware of what the other two are discussing. And the series ends not with the credits, but with a shot of the sky of Mars, as the camera continually pans upward. A bright star blinks out, and the dream comes to an end.

Cowboy Bebop Session 24: Hard Luck Woman

2012-01-26T16:44:00.000-06:00

Who is Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV? Throughout the whole series, we’ve seen Edward as a kooky but happy young girl. The fact that she was living on her own when the crew first encountered her was strange, but she seemed to be doing well enough on her own that it went unquestioned. So when we finally see why she was on her own, her story immediately changes from funny to tragic. My distate for Ed has not gone unsaid in these reviews, but “Hard Luck Woman” makes it all worth it.

Much of the series has been about how to address the past and whether or not it is worth obsessing over. Much like in “Jupiter Jazz,” “Hard Luck Woman” examines how far some would go to recapture the past. Spike and Jet spend most of the episode off to the side as Faye and Ed search for their own pasts. Faye has been spending her nights watching the Beta tape from “Speak Like a Child,” desperately trying to remember her past and looking for clues in the tape about where it was shot. When Ed tells her that she knows where a certain lion-shaped fountain featured in the video is located, Faye changes the Bebop’s course and heads to Earth. They take off in the Redtail, with Ed strapped to the hull, and begin their hunt.

Before long, Ed reveals that she has taken them on a detour so they can visit an orphanage she spent time in. While there, the nun in charge states that Ed just came in one day and acted like she’d always been there, then, some time later, disappeared. She likened Ed to a cat, reinforcing the fact that despite her naivety and innocence, she can certainly handle herself. The nun also gives Ed a small hologram of her father, and said that he was looking for her, thus setting in motion Ed’s desire to fully reconnect with her past. To her, the orphanage was a nice place to stop off and get food, but she had no ties to it. But the chance to reconnect with her father triggers something in her. She holds up her end of the bargain with Faye and takes her to the fountain, then returns to the ship to begin searching for her dad.

Faye, meanwhile, encounters an elderly woman who claims to remember her from when she was in school. She comments on how Faye looks exactly the same as she did before the accident, and initially thought Faye was a ghost, stating that ghosts are known to appear in places where they have regrets. Later, in the shower, Faye’s memories come flooding back and utterly destroy her as the person we knew her as. All of the cynicism and anger melt away, and all that remains is a scared woman trying to get back to where she was before she lost everything. For once, she doesn’t have a snarky comment when Jet or Spike yell at her, and she even manages to eke out a soft “I’m sorry” to Spike, which really throws him for a loop. She decides that it’s time for her to stop running away from life and finally go where she “belongs.” As she leaves, she encourages Ed to do the same, saying that belonging somewhere is the best feeling one can experience.

Unfortunately, for both women, it’s not to be. Throughout the episode, we see Ed’s father, Appledelhi, traveling across the planet in an amphibious off-road vehicle to sites of meteor impacts. He and a partner conduct landscape surveys to redraw maps of Earth after every major meteor hit, and it is the only thing he can focus on. He can’t remember his assistant’s name, and never considers looking for his child until Ed appears before him during the climax. Spike and Jet track him down after seeing a 50 million wulong bounty on his head, and Ed follows in the Bebop. Appledelhi is initially overjoyed to see his daughter (or his son, he can’t quite recall), but his true love calls when a meteor strikes the planet miles away. As he leaves the Bebop crew in the dust, Jet and Spike can barely believe what they just saw, while Ed looks absolutely heartbroken.

Both Faye an Ed learn through tragedy that you can’t go home again (Faye learns this in pretty much the most literal way imaginable). For the most fleeting of instants, they each thought they could finally recapture the past and be with people who wanted them around, instead of living amongst people who could barely stand each other and spent most of their time struggling to eat. But while Ed realized that her only way forward was to forge a new path and seek out a new life wherever it may come, Faye gave up and spent the night in the ruins of her family’s home. Meanwhile, Jet and Spike sat in silence in the Bebop’s common room, with the status quo restored to what it was in “Asteroid Blues,” something they each claimed at some point to want. With Faye, Ed, and Ein (who left with Ed) gone, they could get back to the dynamic they had when the series began. The last thing we see is a pinwheel, given by Ed to Spike, taped to the bow of the ship. Spike and Jet do what they can to hold on to what they’ve lost, even if all they can do is make a shrine to their memories.

Up next: We see violent images, with Jet getting shot and syndicate members coming after both Spike and Vicious. Jet narrates that everything that begins must end, and that all we can do is accept that. He discusses the nature of humanity, ending as a scene of Spike and Julia meeting in a cemetery is played.

Cowboy Bebop Session 23: Brain Scratch

2012-01-25T16:26:00.001-06:00

For roughly the first five minutes of “Brain Scratch,” all the images we see are television broadcasts. The episode opens with TV static and a channel number in the upper right hand corner, then cuts to a different channel playing a commercial for some organization called Scratch. Every few seconds, the channel changes, and we are treated to scenes of various shows from the year 2071, none of which would look too out of place today. We see sensationalist news reports about suicides related to Scratch, a show in which a man simultaneously gives advice to and berates a crying woman who lost her son to Scratch, and an exercise infomercial for a combination elliptical machine/DJ booth. Finally, the channel changes to a reporter interviewing a woman who recently joined Scratch. She says that the group’s philosophy of shedding the physical body, which keeps us a slave to our desires and our obligations, and living on the internet attracted her because she was tired of living in debt. The woman is Faye, and the viewer is Spike. And so the episode begins.

“Brain Scratch” is an interesting work of post-modern fiction. Without going into an in-depth explanation, post-modern works include things like questioning of reality, unreliable narrators, multiple different perspectives, and the use of the media to tell the story. Two post-modern works from different media include Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and Paul Verhoeven’s Total Recall (sadly, I have not read Philip K. Dick’s “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale,” upon which the film was based). Dark Knight told Batman’s story through the eyes of multiple people, including the new police commissioner, the new Robin, and many media figures. Half of the story was told via TV screens, with different people spouting off their opinions of Batman and the state of Gotham City. Total Recall examines the concepts of reality and identity, asking if our memories equal ourselves, and whether “false” memories could still be real. Lead character Quaid is led to believe that his entire life is a lie, and that he doesn’t really exist. Instead, everything he remembers was implanted in his head to lead the real owner of his body to the headquarters of a resistance movement. But Quaid refuses to accept that he is not “real” or that he would ever betray a cause he believes in (or was forced to believe in).

In “Brain Scratch,” we learn a lot about the story from television and the internet. We watch the characters absorb commentary from television “personalities.” The episode examines what constitutes reality when we subject ourselves to fantasy on a daily basis. The cult Scratch woos people into becoming members by promising to take away all pain and desire, and allow them to live their lives as brain waves on the internet. It would almost appear that Scratch is legit, as its founder and leader, Londes, can’t be found on the physical plane, which leads followers to claim that Londes’ promises are achievable. The crew is looking for him because he has a 38 million wulong bounty on his head, most likely due to the fact that over a hundred people who have become members have committed suicide. But he continues to appear in commercials, explaining that true happiness requires getting rid of your body.

Keep in mind that this episode aired in 1999, well before the rise of social media, in which many people have developed lives on the internet. Thanks to the anonymity that the internet provides us, we can be whoever we want online, without having to worry about consequences. We can voice any opinion, pass ourselves off as any age, gender, race, or sexuality, and can even create multiple new personalities for ourselves. The only limit is imagination… and bandwith.

And that is exactly what Londes has done. Jet and Ed eventually track down “Londes’” physical body, a comatose hacker who had is mind connected to the internet. His mind continues to work and can perform action via the internet, but his body is nothing but a shell, keeping him chained to this plane of existence. Meanwhile, Spike tracks down Faye, passed out in front of a pile of television screens. Londes appears on the screens to deliver an extended monologue about the nature of reality, which is incredibly captivating. Londes discusses the need people feel to be with each other, even if only artificially. He cites this as why humans created the concept of God, but it also goes a long way toward explaining the existence of Twitter. And he says that television is one of the greatest and darkest things ever invented, as it causes people to become detached from reality; we inundate ourselves daily with “dramatic fantasy” and after a while, we can no longer tell reality from fiction. If you doubt this, consider how many things you do because someone on TV did it. Entertainment Weekly has a column informing readers where they can buy the clothes and accessories worn by characters in film and television shows. People watch 24-hour cable news channels, filled with pundits who are exaggerating their beliefs for the sake of being entertaining. We want to be like people on TV, we "ship" characters who we think would make better couples, and our opinions are informed by what we see. Once again, just imagine what this episode could say the writers knew about Facebook and Twitter.

Of course, Spike’s reaction is to shoot his gun at the screens. He probably knows that the physical objects through which Londes appears have no bearing on his health or safety, but all he can do is attack the physical form. Spike is the antithesis of Scratch; he is very tactile, and solves his problems with his fists and his charm. He “fixes” things by attacking them and can smooth talk his way through many situations. But not all; as we see in this episode, he can barely hide his contempt for Scratch when he speaks to representatives while trying to track down Londes. Spike is an old fashioned person, who would be lost with nothing but his mind.

Up next: Ed hums a haunting tune as this reviewer’s eyes tear up.

Cowboy Bebop Session 22: Cowboy Funk

2012-01-24T17:22:00.001-06:00

“Cowboy Funk” begins with Spike very nearly catching Teddy Bomber, the bounty-head-of-the-week. Cornered and thinking he’s done for, Bomber admits to Spike that every bounty head out there is afraid of being hunted by him or some stranger named Andy. Knowing what we do about Spike, and after seeing Andy act like a total prat not two minutes later, this is kind of a strange statement. Why would bounty hunters be afraid of Spike, who comes from a crew with an embarrassingly high failure rate, or Andy, a man who can’t stop boasting about himself even when he can’t recognize his target? But then the episode unfolds and the answer becomes clear: where these men go, destruction, and sometimes death, follows.

First off, let’s think about why so many of the Bebop’s adventures end in failure: their targets die. A lot. Asimov, the eco-terrorists, Decker, and the space pirates all died because the crew couldn’t capture their prey without some kind of problem occurring. Furthermore, Spike and Faye tend to forget about the consequences to their actions when they are pursuing targets. Neither one is that delicate, much to Jet’s irritation, and will do outrageous things in their attempts to get paid. Just remember their plan to shoot at two cargo ships in “Wild Horses,” thinking that they could deduce which one was their target based on which one fought and which one fled. They were willing to fire upon an innocent cargo crew and had completely forgotten that the possibility that neither were their target still existed. Anything to get paid. (Well, usually; there have been times when we’ve seen the group forego a payday for altruistic reasons.)

So when the bounty hunter known as “Cowboy Andy” shows up, directly and indirectly causes property damage, accuses Spike of being Teddy Bomber, then rides his horse over Spike, we realize why Andy is so feared. His obliviousness may not result in many of his targets going to jail, but it does cause lots of injury for people he encounters. And while Spike is smart and generally aware of himself, his stubborn personality and desire to finish the job has led to plenty of injury and destruction. His friends point this out right away, but Spike can’t believe that he could be compared to someone as stupid and dangerous as Andy.

As the episode goes on, the crew continues hunting for Teddy Bomber, and each time they get interrupted by Andy. Andy’s involvement endlessly irritates not only Spike, but Bomber himself, as each time Andy arrives, he is in the middle of explaining his motivations to Spike. Bomber is actually not too different from Spike and Andy either, as all three are very full of themselves. Andy is the most outwardly so, as all he can talk about is himself, and his home (a houseboat) reflects his personality to an unsettling degree. Spike has a level of confidence that borders on cockiness, and he flies off the handle when Jet and Faye suggest he might have similarities to the doltish Andy. Despite some obvious parallels, admitting their similarities would destroy Spike’s good image of himself. Bomber’s problem is that he hates being ignored, and all he wants out of life is for people to recognize his brilliance. He makes a point of blowing up buildings after warning people so that his bombs won’t injure anyone. He doesn’t want to hurt people, he wants to educate them, and he thinks that the only way to get people’s attention is to blow up buildings. He claims that he is making a statement about society by blowing up large buildings, but the statement is so convoluted and unrelated to his actions that people must actually listen to him in order to understand his message. By the end of the episode, Bomber basically begs Spike and Andy to show up at his crime scene, then chastises them when they are “late.” He does set a trap for the pair this time around, but it seemed almost a secondary concern, seeing how easily Spike would have taken him in if not for Andy’s interference. (I want to say that he was counting on their bickering to lead them into the trap, but he seemed genuinely surprised when they ignored him to snipe at each other.)

The episode effectively gets us to reexamine Spike, who is pretty much the default lead character. For most of the series, we have seen him as a flawed anti-hero who is a good fighter and intelligent part of a crew that is incompetent despite itself. But by placing Spike next to someone who embodies his worst traits, amplified to absurd levels, we have to ask: is Spike the Bebop’s weak link?

Up next: Andy begins narrating over strange images that have no meaning outside of context. He claims he’ll be coming back in the next episode. Spike is not amused.

Cowboy Bebop Session 21: Boogie Woogie Feng Shui

2012-01-21T16:58:00.000-06:00

Remember when I said that “Mushroom Samba” was my least favorite episode of Bebop? Well, I still think that, but looking back on that episode, compared to “Boogie Woogie Feng Shui,” I realize that it was at least entertainingly bad. It had some good ideas that I wish had been differently executed, and there was some humor. But I usually find Ed extremely annoying, and the execution left a lot to be desired. Compare this to “Boogie Woogie Feng Shui,” an episode that I sometimes forget exists. It starts out interesting, promising us a caper story featuring Jet, the daughter of an old friend of his, and a message from beyond the grave. But it ends up going nowhere fast, and much of the conflict isn’t that interesting. It isn’t groan-inducing, the way some aspects of “Mushroom Samba” are, but you’ll probably forget about it not too long after watching it.

As I stated, the episode is structured like a caper from the 1940s, with lots of narration from Jet to set the mood and a very interesting hook. Jet receives a letter from a man named Pao, an old friend he lost touch with, but the only brings Jet to Pao’s grave. But two things happen while Jet mulls over how a dead man could have sent him a letter: first, he meets Meifa, Pao’s estranged daughter, and two men who look like the Blues Brothers begin shooting at Jet and Meifa. Jet and Meifa escape back to the Bebop, where they decide what to do next. Meifa explains the concept of Feng Shui to Jet; Pao was a master of the art, and she is trying to follow in his footsteps. The skeptical Jet thinks it’s just a fancy method of fortune telling, but Meifa says it’s more of a way to control destiny by turning bad luck into good luck.

Unfortunately, this is where the episode begins to fall apart. The pair resolve to find something called a “sun stone,” but much of their detective work comes from Meifa reading a luo pan, an instrument for Feng Shui reading, that never gets quite explained. Most of her dialogue indicates that Feng Shui can be used to track things down or determine where and when a set of circumstances will occur, but the only explicit explanation of the value of Feng Shui is her “bad luck into good luck” explanation. I wasn’t able to fully suspend my disbelief that Meifa could decipher her father’s clues and track things down using only her luo pan or that Jet would go along with her. Even Jet himself isn’t quite sure, as revealed in one of his voiceover narrations. The world of Cowboy Bebop has its fair share of mystical happenings, such as Laughing Bull correctly telling Spike where he could find Asimov in “Asteroid Blues” or the fortune teller correctly telling Hakim where Ein was in “Stray Dog Strut,” but for the most part, things in the show are explainable through science. Furthermore, Jet tends to be a skeptic; when Spike was about to consult Laughing Bull, Jet couldn’t believe that Spike could rest his search on the words of a shaman.

Worse yet is that the conflict is never too exciting. The Blues Brothers goons chasing Jet and Meifa never really pose much of a threat; they are terrible shots, and they go down with almost no fight. Also, I found it really strange to see Jet kill one of them then have some kids, who had just been antagonized by the goons, run over and laugh at the death of their tormentor. It was certainly disturbing. Then, when we learn about why the men were chasing Jet and Meifa, it seems rather anti-climactic. Jet reveals that Pao used to “consult” for a syndicate, but turned informant when he wanted out. Jet was his I.S.S.P. contact, but he eventually decided not to get out, fearing that the syndicate would take revenge on his family. The syndicate is seeking out Pao to make sure he doesn’t talk, but this doesn’t make sense based on what we’ve seen in the episode. The Blues Brothers were shooting at Jet and Meifa, even though the two of them were the syndicate’s best chance of finding Pao. In addition, I personally was not satisfied with the vague “consulting” explanation. Personally, the vagueness was not enough to engage me in the conflict, but I feel that this is more of a personal preference than an actual problem with the episode.

Finally, the episode ends with two things that felt unearned to me. First, Jet tries to shoehorn in a fate vs. personal choice type moral that seems to come from nowhere. In this case, it’s more of an argument over whether anyone can control the will of another: when confronted with the idea that Pao used Feng Shui to ensure that Meifa would come looking for him, Jet angrily retorts that Meifa would have done so regardless, and nothing Pao could have done would have made her do any differently. The episode could have made this a much stronger theme by putting Jet’s skepticism front and center throughout, rather than having him follow Meifa without question. Secondly, after spending the episode thinking Meifa worshipped her father and wanted to follow in his footsteps, she suddenly reveals that for many years she despised him. Once again, this is a fine development, but it had not been foreshadowed at all. Meifa did say that she didn’t spend a lot of time with him, but all of her dialogue and body language suggested that they had a strong relationship.

Unfortunately, all of the errors with this episode end up making it fairly forgettable. Without a strong conflict or memorable characters, this episode is not one that sticks with you.

Up next: Jet narrates the preview like an old-fashioned Western, complete with whistling music. We see a man dressed in a cowboy hat, riding a horse, and close with Jet starting to wonder if they’ve taken the cowboy motifs too far.

Cowboy Bebop Session 20: Pierrot le Fou

2012-01-15T13:13:00.001-06:00

When I think about my favorite episodes of Cowboy Bebop, I tend to gravitate towards the mythology episodes: “Ballad of Fallen Angels,” “Ganymede Elegy,” “Jupiter Jazz,” “Speak Like a Child,” and “The Real Folk Blues.” I often forget that “Pierrot le Fou” even exists at times. This is truly upsetting, as it is without a doubt the best non-mythology episode of the series, and stands right beside the aforementioned episodes, quality-wise. I think the reason my mind tends to gloss over it at times is because it is so different from all other episodes of the show. There is no bounty-head-of-the-week, very little story, and the aesthetics of the world are much different than what we’re used to, especially in the opening scene and the flashback toward the end.

Much like “Toys in the Attic,” another episode without a bounty-head-of-the-week, “Pierrot le Fou” riffs on horror movies. But unlike “Toys,” which was more of a parody of containment thrillers like Alien (the monster was a mutated lobster that had spent too much time in Spike’s dirty fridge), “Pierrot” is a much more serious take on psychological horror and slasher films. The incredible thing is that “Pierrot” is probably scarier than the average slasher film (I say this while not at all being an expert on the genre).

The episode’s story is almost non-existent: Spike meets an insane serial killer, known only as Mad Pierrot, and is forced to confront him. Pierrot is known to never leave any survivors, and brutally hunts down anyone who sees his face, so Spike will never be safe until Pierrot is dead. That’s it. It’s nothing deep, but it is enough of a reason to make an episode about a super-creepy man, who is a kind of cross between The Joker and The Penguin, who kills with abandon and is nearly invulnerable. His image is disturbing in its innocence, as one wouldn’t assume that a fat (nearly spherical) man with a large stovepipe hat and ruff would be dangerous. Then he starts to float and defy physics. He bows and curtsies to his victims, he is polite, beginning an encounter with the line “Hello gentlemen, I have journeyed here in order to take your lives!” He is fast as hell and can’t be shot due to a force field preventing fast-moving objects from striking him. And he is armed to the teeth with all sorts of guns and explosives. The man is scary.

The all-out creepiness of the episode is aided by the absolutely terrifying music, which really helps set the tone while not being obvious about what it’s doing. I don’t think I ever noticed how unsettling the music really was until this viewing, which was done with a more critical eye. At the beginning of the episode, when Pierrot’s character is established, the music sounds like nails on a chalkboard. At the end of the episode, when Spike and Pierrot have their climactic battle in an abandoned amusement park, the music changes to creepy carnival music. The unsettling nature of the carnival soundtrack is underscored when we learn the truth about Pierrot and his child-like mind.

This episode is so much about the senses’ experience than the more intellectual episodes. Fortunately, “Pierrot” is an absolute feast for the senses while still maintaining a strong intellect (unlike a certain “groundbreaking” 3D movie that shall remain nameless). As already pointed out, the music sets the mood perfectly. The visuals are some of the best in the entire series, even though they are almost minimized in the opening scenes. Specifically, the lighting throughout the episode is absolutely incredible, and the shadow work in the opening is brilliant. The first scenes with Spike and Pierrot take place in a large city that looks nothing like what we’ve seen before on Bebop. Most of the cities have a few skyscrapers at most, which are spread out, and all of the buildings are in decay. “Pierrot” opens in a huge city that looks more like New York or Chicago from the 1920s; it’s very dense, and Pierrot’s first victims are about to get in to a vintage car. The shadows are extremely heavy, and everything not fully lit is absolutely black. There is a scene with Spike in a dimly lit pool hall, and the only visible things are the people and the tops of the tables. But when things are lit, they are lit brilliantly, especially when the light source is one of Pierrot’s explosives. Explosions bathe the world in vibrant reds, oranges, yellows, and purples, in a way not yet seen on this show.

But lighting and shadow would be pointless without things to light, and “Pierrot le Fou” has no shortage of great setpieces. The aforementioned city, pool hall, and abandoned carnival are all fantastic, but this review would not be complete without a mention of the still images or the flashback (or the still images in the flashback). As a way to help set the tone, the episode uses various still images to let the mood sink in. When Spike arrives at the carnival, it appears abandoned, and we see numerous shots of shadowy rides as we hear Spike’s footsteps in the distance. Later, a flashback to how Mad Pierrot came to be is shown in overexposed light, which is a bit hard on the eyes after the relatively dark episode. At the end, when Pierrot awakes from a sleepwalking state into the man he is today, the action suddenly ends and we see two still shots of dead guards covered in blood. The episode holds on them for a while, as the images of death and gore are burned into our minds.

The episode does forward some character arcs, notably Faye’s not-so-hidden affection for Spike. She tries her hardest to prevent Spike from going to meet Pierrot for a rematch after Spike barely made it out of their first encounter alive, and she physically comes to his rescue (although doesn’t really succeed), while all Jet and Ed do is find info on Pierrot. This is obviously important, but Jet talked Ed through the hacking process while he was in Hammerhead, so I don’t see why he couldn’t have flown to meet up with Spike and Faye. Regardless, this is a fantastic episode, and certainly one of the best of the series.

Up next: We see Jet with a young girl as Spike and Faye insinuate that the two are dating. Faye even says she is starting to think less of Jet. However, Jet has no idea what they’re talking about, then complains that he didn’t get to do anything throughout the whole preview.

Cowboy Bebop Session 19: Wild Horses

2012-01-14T15:22:00.000-06:00

“Wild Horses” is a fine, but not great episode that has a really cool ending. For a story about the history of the Swordfish and featuring space pirates as the bounty-heads-of-the-week, the episode just seemed like a whole lot of wasted potential.

One thing I thought the episode did well was show how the different characters see their world differently. Think back to the Firefly episode “Objects in Space,” when bounty hunter/aspiring philosopher Jubal Early commented on whether or not we imbue objects with meaning. That idea is on full display here when Spike, Jet, and Doohan – a mechanic and the builder of the Swordfish – all see the same things in different ways. Spike at one point refers to the Swordfish as “just some old ship,” but we soon learn that it was made to be a racing craft (I guess Spike had the weapons added later). In an old picture of Doohan and Swordfish, the ship looks like it had just been built, without a scratch on it and a vibrant paint job. This is a stark contrast to the banged up thing we see every week. One man treated it like gold, the other sees it as a tool to be used without care. Jet meanwhile takes offense when the pirates he and Faye are hunting call the Bebop junk, whereas Spike almost seems to agree with that assessment. But his perception of the ship changes when his life is at risk; trapped in a malfunctioning Swordfish, he sighs with relief when he sees the Bebop, saying that the “old hulk looks like a goddess to me now.”

These perceptions are based on the different characters’ personalities as well as their situations. We already know that Spike has a very relaxed attitude about most things, highlighted last episode when he tried to make the VCR work by kicking it. Doohan, on the other hand, is very meticulous and set in his ways. He and his assistant Miles are restoring some old ship, which Spike refers to as an ancient relic, despite Spike and Miles’ belief that doing so is pointless. None of the systems on the old ship will be compatible with modern navigating software and the thing has various designs that are completely outdated in 2071. But Doohan is stubborn and wants to do it, most likely for the fun of it. Doohan also scolds Miles when he suggests they upgrade some of the systems on the Swordfish while repairing it, and says that he’s trying to make a point with Swordfish.

Unfortunately, the pirates story isn’t as interesting. The characters are not developed well beyond their surfer dude stereotypes. They cause interesting things to happen, such as giving computer viruses to the Bebop and the crew’s personal ships, and necessitating the thrilling rescue of Spike at the end, but when they are on-screen, they can be tough to sit through. Also, speaking of the computer virus, it is Jet, rather than Ed, who does most of the work to eradicate it from the Bebop’s systems. I continue to wonder about her purpose on the ship.

Fortunately, the climax nearly makes up for the episode’s problems. First off, it does a good job of reminding us about Spike’s complete indifference to the idea of death. The man believes so much in the idea that he has already died and is living on in a dream that it doesn’t matter if he dies now. What he saw as his life is long over, and what remains, a Spartan existence on a rundown ship with people he can barely stand, is not a reality he’ll go out of his way to preserve. But even better is how Doohan and Miles come to his rescue. I won’t spoil the surprise (but the episode isn’t as clever about hiding it as it thinks it is), but it’s a great use of history* (the episode takes place on Earth) and is filled with thrilling heroics.

Up next: The only narration we get is maniacal laughter, as scenes of intense violence and creepy lab experiments play. The preview ends with Spike helpless on the ground as a man raises a gun to his head.

*Sadly, the tragic explosion in 2003 makes “historical accuracy” impossible.

Cowboy Bebop Session 18: Speak Like A Child

2012-01-08T22:41:00.000-06:00

Have you ever felt like you’ve lost a part of yourself? Maybe you physically lost an item that you felt represented you, or some event occurred and changed your entire perspective on life. If so, your life may have gone in a new direction, but you still retained the memories of who you were. You could choose how to react to the change, and decide how it would affect your personality. Faye Valentine doesn’t have that luxury. She exists alongside Spike and Jet, both of whom probably wish they could forget parts of their past at times, and remembers only three years of her life. Her cynical, cutthroat nature is all there is too her, a personality resulting from a horrible betrayal.

The story is kicked off by the arrival of a mysterious videotape. A courier service drops it off for Faye, but believing the package to be something from one of her many creditors, she runs off. Because the cost of accepting the package was extremely high, Jet decides to find out what’s on the tape or get some money for it. He and Spike take it to a small shop run by a man who is basically a Martian hipster, complete with a flannel shirt, knit cap, and dismissive attitude towards any television shows made after 1999. The man is a collector of 20^th century technology and covets his CD players and videocassette players as if they were worth their weight in gold. The machines probably have some value, as we learn that they are exceedingly rare. But they represent a dead technology, and the interest in them appears to be concentrated solely in the Martian collector

The man’s collection and the contents of an abandoned, underground museum show us some of humanity’s lost past. Spike and Jet walk by various items that we today consider to be essential to life – CD players, air conditioners – and have no idea what they are. Spike nonchalantly abuses one of the collector’s cassette players when it stops working, believing that kicking it will make it work better. This could be because machines are much less susceptible to damage in the future, but more likely it’s just another example of Spike’s casual attitude toward objects he is struggling to use (recall his struggle to open the virus canister in “Gateway Shuffle,” culminating with him shooting it). Spike doesn’t understand that any of these devices are precision equipment, over a century old, that probably shouldn’t be kicked. To him, it’s just useless junk.

Humanity’s loss is even greater than technology, though. Spike and Jet’s search for a working BetaMax player takes them to Japan, known to them as “Old Asia,” which is in ruins. They arrive in a ruined city, most likely Tokyo, which makes all the other decadent cities we’ve seen on the show look like bustling, well-kept metropolises. The city is abandoned, and debris litters the streets. Even after seeing parts of Earth in “Jamming with Edward,” the sight of a ruined Tokyo is shocking to the viewer, while it’s just an annoyance to Spike and Jet. Earth is a lost cause to them, part of a past that is long gone.

Eventually, the crew is reunited, after Faye finds the flimsiest of excuses to return to the Bebop, and they use a working BetaMax to watch the tape. And so begins one of Cowboy Bebop’s most heartbreaking sequences. Faye was sent the tape by herself. It just took a little longer to get to her than expected. The tape is a short video diary taken by her teenaged self, meant to be viewed ten years later. The Faye depicted on the tape (whose name may not be Faye) is very shy and nervous at first, but eventually opens up and reveals herself to be a cheery optimist. She wakes up and happily greets the day, wondering aloud what kinds of wonders she’ll encounter. She says that she’ll be different when she watches ten years later, but the same person deep down, then pleads with her future self not to ever forget herself.

Spike may not be a gangster any more. Jet isn’t a cop. But they still retain traces of who they are; Spike is still headstrong, while Jet still tries to live as an honorable man. But Faye has lost all traces of who she was before being frozen. Even after she awoke, we only saw her as a scared woman alone in a world that was unfamiliar to her before she became the cynic of the present. The vision of her as a cheerful, carefree girl is new to both viewers and Faye herself. And it brings her to tears.

Up next: Ein provides the narration, consisting mostly of barks and woofs, while Spike comments on what Ein is “saying.”

Cowboy Bebop Session 17: Mushroom Samba

2012-01-07T18:50:00.001-06:00

Cowboy Bebop is such a great show that when it fails, it hurts all the more. “Mushroom Samba” is my least favorite episode of the series for two reasons: First, it focuses on Ed, my least favorite character on the show, and it shows her at her worst. And second, partly because of that focus, it wastes so much potential. This episode uses 70’s Blaxploitation films as inspiration and features three guest characters, including the bounty-head-of-the-week, straight out of movies like Shaft and Foxy Brown. But the only character who interacts with them is Ed, and I use the term “interaction” loosely, seeing as how Ed barely acknowledges what is going on around her.

Spike, Jet, and Faye are out of commission for most of the episode. The Bebop crash lands in the desert of Europa. Out of fuel and food and with the ship in need of repair, Spike and Jet stay behind to work on the Bebop while Faye deals with food poisoning. This leaves Ed and Ein to go out in search of food. In the course of her search, she comes across Coffy, Shaft, and Domino, but remains nearly oblivious to their actions. Coffy and Shaft are each hunting down Domino, a psychedelic mushroom dealer with a bounty on his head; Coffy is a bounty hunter looking for the reward while Shaft is looking to avenge his brother who died from eating one of Domino’s mushrooms. Unfortunately, these stories remain on the fringes of the episode and neither of them get resolved. Unlike in other episodes, in which we get insight into the lives and motivations of the guest characters (think Roco in “Waltz for Venus,” Gren in “Jupiter Jazz,” and Whitney in “My Funny Valentine”), the guest characters this week are merely one-dimensional riffs on Blaxploitation characters. Shaft especially gets the shaft, as his only defining characteristics are his purple zoot suit and rhythmic speaking voice full of jive slang.

Why don’t we get any exploration into the minds and motivations of these three characters? Because we only see them from Ed’s point of view, and that point of view is extremely single-minded and warped. Ed is a brilliant person, able to hack extremely tough systems (when she feels like it), but doesn’t know how to act like a human. She doesn’t experience emotions the way we do and doesn’t understand what’s happening around her. When Shaft pulls a gun on Domino, who is standing right next to Ed, her only reaction is to state to no one in particular that she is hungry. She eventually decides to capture Domino in order to collect the reward, but her bounty hunting skills leave a lot to be desired. Amazingly, she comes very close to capturing him, but I attribute that more to Domino being a coward than any skill on her part.

I’ll come back to that in a second, but first I need to point out how nearly all of Ed’s actions in this episode underscore my continuing bewilderment as to why Spike, Jet, and Faye haven’t dropped Ed off at the nearest space port and leave her behind. Early on in the episode, Ed tells Spike and Jet that she will assist in repairing the Bebop, but succeeds only in damaging it further, eliciting an extremely aggravated response from the two men. At the end of the episode, when a cop investigates the crew’s acquisition of what they believe to be extremely valuable and illegal mushrooms, she nearly (happily) confesses the truth, but Jet and Faye shut her up in time. But the most egregious example of her behavior is when, after seeing Ein have a bad reaction to eating one of Domino’s mushrooms, she proceeds to feed them to the rest of the crew in order to confirm that they are in fact dangerous to eat.

Faye has also done terrible things to the rest of the crew, but she eventually started pulling her weight on the ship. She is an effective enough bounty hunter (the crew’s failure rate is high, but not for lack of trying), which allows her to contribute to the crew’s income. Ed is not so skilled. Supposedly she acts as the ship’s computer expert, but as of this episode, we haven’t seen her hack into anything after joining the crew. In the one episode in which she was given the opportunity to do so, “Bohemian Rhapsody,” she declined in order to play online chess. Furthermore, before Ed came aboard, Jet showed that he was pretty computer-savvy.

If memory serves, this is the only episode in which Ed directly chases the bounty-head-of-the-week, and she only succeeds through pure luck. When she finds him in his ship, instead of incapacitating him, she sprays him with smelly gas. When she finally corners him again, all she does is hold up her hands menacingly. She doesn’t present any firearms nor has she ever shown herself to be an adept fighter. So when Domino gives up, I have to assume it was because he is complete coward, despite not being established as one earlier in the episode. Then to cap it off, instead of taking in Domino, she accepts his duffel bag of mushrooms, which he claims are worth much more than him. Assuming that’s true, the mushrooms are illegal, and the crew would have to find a way to fence them without getting caught. At least turning in Domino would be a fast, easy, and legal way to get money.

The episode isn’t all bad. The crew’s drug trips are pretty entertaining and say something about each character. Spike’s trip up an endless “stairway to heaven” reflects his belief that he continues to slog through life, even though he supposedly “died” before coming to the Bebop. Jet has a conversation with his bonsai trees, and chuckles that the world is a great place and that the “secret of the universe” is simple. Jet remains ever the optimist. Faye sees the world enlarge around her and then flood, immersing her in water. Faye is in way over her head, drowning in debt, but she doesn’t fight it, she just goes with the flow. In her trip, she doesn’t struggle against the growing hostility around her, but instead tries to go with the flow by swimming through it as best she can. Unfortunately, the characters are severely underused in this episode. They never leave the vicinity of the ship, meaning they don’t interact with any of the guest characters. I for one would have loved to see Spike play off Coffy or Jet fight off Shaft in an effort to get to Domino first. Alas.

Up next: Jet begins referring to a mysterious video tape as music from a caper film plays. He hints at surprising twists before admitting that he thinks the next episode is kind of silly. However, he suggests that, at the very least, “Speak Like A Child” will allow for multiple interpretations.

Cowboy Bebop Session 16: Black Dog Serenade

2012-01-04T23:42:00.000-06:00

Since the beginning of the series, Jet Black has had a mechanical arm and metal plates on his face. We have never been told why, and it has only been brought up twice; the first time was when Spike sarcastically asked him about his arm as a way to deflect an unwanted question, and the second was a comment by Faye to Spike. The characters don’t talk about it because there is no reason to do so, aside from audience exposition. As Jet once said, a man’s past is his business. But now, Jet’s past has caught up with him.

On a prison ship, a riot has left the ship in the prisoners’ control. One prisoner, in a jovial mood, offers champagne to another. The latter is thin, stone-faced, and speaks in a monotone. A pan shot over the ship’s hallway suggests that the latter prisoner was solely responsible for killing multiple guards. The first prisoner slowly grows scared, as he realizes he is speaking with Udai Taxim, one of the solar system’s most dangerous syndicate assassins. He is also the man Jet was chasing when he lost his arm. Udai was Jet’s final target before leaving the I.S.S.P., and just when he thought he’d captured him, Jet learned that he’d been set up. And then he only had one arm.

Jet gets drawn back into the hunt for Udai when Fad, his last police partner before retiring, asks Jet to help capture the prisoners. The thought of finally getting closure gives Jet some pause and causes him to lose focus on his present. Like before, when returning to Ganymede, the thought of being confronted with his past is quite disturbing to Jet. This time, he zones out while holding a cigarette, letting it burn down to his hand. Faye snaps him back to reality, asking him if he can feel the cigarette burn his prosthetic. She points out that biologic replacements are available, but Jet snaps back, saying that he doesn’t need instruction from anyone but himself.

The rest of the episode focuses on Jet and Fad’s mission, and serves to highlight Jet’s skills as a detective and explore some of the failings of the I.S.S.P. As Jet and Fad try to track down the ship, Jet uses his knowledge of Udai’s past and his thought processes to correctly determine where the ship is going. Meanwhile, on the ship, it turns out that one of the prisoners used to be a captain with the I.S.S.P. The other prisoners are surprised that he could fall to the temptation of crime, but he responds that he’s just as human as they are.

And then the bombshell reveal of the episode comes along and calls all of Jet’s theories about the honor of men into question. The person who set up Jet was Fad, his partner. He was on the Syndicate’s payroll, and they ordered him to take out Jet, who was getting too close to the Syndicate higher-ups. Fad tells Jet that he could never “play the game,” and that kind of person either gave up, like Jet did, or died young. In an honorable world, Jet would never have given up to take the job of bounty hunter. He would have kept going, even when the world was against him. He wouldn’t have had to put up with corrupt cops like Fad or the ex-captain on the prison ship. And as for Fad specifically, what does that fact that one of Jet’s closest male friends turned out to be corrupt say about Jet’s “men live by iron codes of honor” belief?

But things aren’t so bad. Jet finally gets his man, and Fad really does care about Jet, in a sick, twisted way that would allow for him to take his arm. He asks Jet to come back to the force, and he seems to truly want him to, especially after seeing him track Udai and the ship. And when Fad thinks he’ll have to confront Jet about his betrayal, he loads a single bullet into his six-shooter and uses it to kill Udai. Jet makes it clear that what he did is unforgivable, so Fad raises his gun on Jet, knowing that Jet will defend himself. Fad knew that he would have no chance against him now that he’s out of bullets, but he goes to his death willingly. The world is complicated, much more so that Jet would like to believe.

Up next: Funky disco music plays as characters that seem to be from a Blaxploitation film play. The three old men narrate the segment, but spend so much time bickering that they don’t say anything about “Mushroom Samba.”

Cowboy Bebop Session 15: My Funny Valentine

2011-12-29T19:04:00.001-06:00

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

2011-12-25T14:18:00.001-06:00

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

2011-12-19T20:50:00.000-06:00

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

2011-12-13T21:52:00.001-06:00

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

2011-12-11T11:58:00.000-06:00

“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

2011-12-06T01:03:00.001-06:00

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.

Cowboy Bebop Session 9: Jamming with Edward

2011-12-03T16:50:00.000-06:00

I’m just going to come out and say it: Ed is by far my least favorite character on Cowboy Bebop. I don’t like her hyperactivity or tendency to speak in childish phrases (although some of her non sequiturs are pretty funny). She has a good rapport with Ein, but I could take or leave her relationships with Jet and Faye. And with the exception of her role in her final episode, I don’t see much purpose for her on the ship. As we learn from this episode, Ed is an accomplished hacker (or, in the parlance of the times, “net diver”). However, as I’ve pointed out a few times, Jet has shown that he is very competent with computers and hacking, and I’m not quite sure why the writers felt the crew needed someone whose only skill was hacking. But I digress. How was “Jamming with Edward” as an episode? Seeing how the episode is very Ed-centric, it is not my favorite, but it certainly has good elements, most of which explain the history of the solar system or further develop the characters of Spike, Jet, and Faye.

Most of this episode took place on Earth, which has come to be a pretty awful place to live. The planet is surrounded by debris, most of which consists of moon rocks left from the gate explosion we saw in “Sympathy for the Devil.” The planet is plagued by rock showers, which cause massive explosions upon impact with the planet. When the crew learns that they will have to go to Earth to search for the latest bounty head, Jet complains that nothing good comes from the Earth anymore. The state of the Earth is another great example of Bebop’s ability to balance cynicism with optimism, and the show treats the subject very well. Humans finally ended up destroying much of the Earth when they tried to implement a new technology, and now the people stuck on Earth either live underground or are subjected to horrific environmental conditions and have been basically forgotten by the rest of the human race. On the other hand, humans have continued to exist, and the gate technology has allowed them to do so on other planets. What’s more, the show doesn’t base the episode around man’s failure to preserve our home planet; the idea is there for those who see it, but it is not essential to the overall enjoyment of the series.

As moon rocks constantly change the Earth’s topography, the bounty head bringing the crew to Earth is altering the Earth’s surface in its own way. A satellite system, commanded by a satellite with a glowing red eye, similar to HAL 3000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey, has been using lasers to carve large animal shapes into barren areas of South America. The carvings have caused a widespread media response, with people speculating around the clock about the purpose for the carvings and their culprits. Through clips of various news shows, we learn of the 8 million wulong bounty on the culprit, that people suspect that the culprit is a hacker named Radical Edward, and that only crazy people believe that aliens exist.

Spike decides to sit this adventure out, claiming hackers are boring, so Jet and Faye search for Ed themselves. Meanwhile, we see Ed doing various things, from tracking the location of the Bebop to messing with I.S.S.P. agents sent to arrest her by remotely accessing their ship and crashing it. We get to know some of her quirks, like her distinctive speech patterns and methods of moving (the girl is made of rubber). We also see her figure out who is responsible for the strange carvings: the satellite system itself. When she hacks into the satellite, she is greeted by a strange voice (which sadly does not say “Good morning Ed. I’m afraid I can’t do that, Ed.”) identifying itself as the CPU for the satellite system. The satellite explains that Earth used to be a beautiful planet and that it had many similar carvings, but after the explosion, many were lost, so it decided to recreate them. (Sounds a little like WALL-E, in that only a machine appreciates the Earth anymore.)

Ed decides to rename the satellite MPU, because it’s kind of like CPU only neater… Her words, not mine. She then contacts the Bebop crew with an offer: she will give up the identity of the bounty in exchange for a favor. The impulsive Faye greedily accepts without hesitation, or even learning what the favor is to be. Ed informs the crew that their target is MPU, but warns them that “capturing” it won’t be easy because the satellite network is armed with lasers to protect itself against saboteurs.

The climax features some great dog-fighting choreography as Spike and Faye attempt to get close enough to MPU without getting fried, as Ed assures MPU that Spike will only make a copy of the program so it can continue to exist. Through Ed’s advice, Spike is able to get close enough to make a copy of MPU, but the crew doesn’t get their happy ending when Earth officials rule that bounties can only be collected on living beings.

But before the Bebop can leave Earth, Ed demands that they fulfill their end of the bargain: she asks to become a crew member. Faye encourages Jet to take off, exclaiming that some (most) promises are meant to be broken. That one line of dialogue does more for Faye’s character than entire movies provide for some of their characters. Other great character bits include a shot of Jet continuing to poorly care for his bonsai tree, Faye’s belief that hackers are all stereotypical fat nerds, Spike’s desire to help out once the situation gets dangerous (flying against attacking satellites), and a few stray comments Jet makes about women in general and Faye in particular. Once again, Jet shows disdain for women, complaining that he’s not one to lead around a woman, or be led around by one. He also makes a snarky comment about Faye’s age, causing her to smash her heel into his foot. I always remember how much I enjoy Spike and Jet, but for some reason, I tend to forget some of Faye’s best moments, like that one.

As Ed looks on at the retreating Bebop, she pulls out her remote and brings the ship back. The final scene shows Spike and Jet once again upset about being forced to take on a new crew member. Again, Spike is snappish while Jet looks at the situation with a defeated attitude; he can’t do anything about it, but he’s not happy about it. Spike, on the other hand, complains that the three things he dislikes – children, animals, and women with attitudes – are now all on the ship with them. All Jet can do is reiterate that nothing good comes from the Earth.

Up next: Faye speaks in metaphors about love as slow piano music plays. She refers to having no regrets about the woman who got away, despite the lingering pain. We see images of Jet and a fishing village as Faye states that in the next episode, Jet Black will “sing it up with soul.”

Cowboy Bebop Session 8: Waltz for Venus

2011-11-29T14:47:00.000-06:00

I’d like to start this review with two quotes, one from the previous episode of Bebop and one from Firefly, a show seen by many as a live-action equivalent (or the nearest thing to a live-action equivalent) to Bebop.

“Bounty hunters must be the lowest form of life there is… human beings are just a price tag to them.” –VT, Cowboy Bebop Episode 7, “Heavy Metal Queen”

“Every planet that's been terraformed for human life has its own little quirks.” –Sheriff, Firefly Episode 3, “The Train Job”

These two quotes frame two overarching issues in Cowboy Bebop that are on full display in “Waltz for Venus”: (1) what kind of people make up the crew of the Bebop and (2) what kind of world(s) are they living in? Let’s start with number two.

The citizens of the solar system in the Cowboy Bebop universe tend to live in less-than-ideal conditions, and are forced to make the best of the situation. Most of what we’ve seen so far has been poverty, with many locations in poor upkeep and ridden with crime. “Waltz for Venus” introduces a new facet of the problem: some planets and moons didn’t turn out quite right when they were terraformed. For instance, when planetary settlers made Venus habitable, they used a species of floating plants to help stabilize the atmosphere. Unfortunately, the plants release spores which induce allergic reactions in some people. If the reactions go untreated, a condition known as “Venus sickness” results, which causes blindness and even death in those affected. From what we see of Venus, it looks like a beautiful enough planet, but I find it hard to believe that anyone would choose to live there knowing that they have a fairly strong chance of contracting a fatal disorder. Instead, most people living there probably settled there before people knew about Venus sickness, and have been unable to afford to leave.

At least that’s the case with Stella Bonnaro, a young woman living in a crashed spaceship in the Venusian desert. The girl is blind from the Venus sickness, but she could regain her sight with the right medicine. Unfortunately, the cost is exorbitant, and it’s unlikely that a person forced to live in an abandoned ship in the middle of the desert has much money (unless said person is extremely eccentric). Enter Stella’s brother Roco, one of the most sympathetic bounty-heads-of-the-week this show will ever use. He works for a small fry crime boss and helped steal a grey ash tree, a rare and valuable plant used to manufacture medicine that cures Venus sickness. So not only is Venus sickness a big risk to people living on Venus, but the medicine used to treat it is very expensive.

This brings us to point number one: when confronted with an opportunity for great profit, what will the Bebop crew do? The episode begins with them FINALLY turning in some bounty heads (named Huey, Dewey, and Louie) for a reward of 1.5 million wulongs. Roco witnessed Spike and Faye in action, and was impressed by Spike’s ability to take down two of the thugs without breaking a sweat. He tracks down Spike and asks him to teach him how to fight. Spike is put off by the request and tries to get rid of Roco, but the man is nothing if not persistent. He eventually gets Spike to relent; Spike explains the philosophy behind his style of combat, which requires being loose and relaxed, like flowing water. Spike remains relaxed against opponents, including Roco, who think that force alone is enough to win fights. However, the lesson is cut short when Roco spots his partners in crime. He gives Spike a package and tells him to meet him that night at a dilapidated cathedral.

Spike opens the package and learns that it’s the grey ash tree. He takes it back to the Bebop, where the crew learns that there is a bounty on Roco, his boss, and the other henchmen who helped steal the grey ash, and that the combined bounty on all seven criminals will be doubled if all are turned in simultaneously. So what kind of people are Spike, Jet, and Faye? They have received a plant of incredible value (tens of millions of wulongs) from a bounty head who has put his trust in Spike. Do they sell the plant and double cross Roco? Spike certainly felt no affection for him before, and they could definitely use the cash.

Of course, Faye is the first to suggest they sell the plant. As I’ve said, Faye is the most cynical and self-interested member of the crew. Jet, the closest the show comes to an honorable man, refuses, but only after hesitating briefly (a fact Faye gleefully points out). Jet clarifies that the plant is stolen, so fencing it will be a risk. Faye tells him that sometimes people need to take risks, but Jet quickly shuts her down, pointing out that she already lost all her money from their recent payday at a casino. Spike decides to investigate more, and this leads him to Stella.

Through her, Spike learns about Roco’s criminal activity. She tells him that Roco tends to get into trouble and hangs out with the wrong crowd. But he does it to earn money to buy medicine for her. Stella would prefer he stayed out of trouble, and has come to terms with her blindness, but Roco is obsessed. Roco’s obsession is dangerous, as it needlessly puts himself in danger, but his heart is clearly in the right place. Stella comments that Roco has a beauty within him, and senses that Spike does as well, despite Spike’s own hesitations about himself.

Stella also explains a little more about Venus sickness, and says that the plant spores responsible fall from the sky and look like snow. It is a beautiful display, but the results of it can be deadly. Nothing is as it seems. Before leaving, Spike finds a packet of grey ash seeds hidden in a music box given to Stella by Roco.

So now, the Bebop crew is in possession of a mature grey ash, worth more than nearly any of the bounty heads featured previously on the show, and multiple grey ash seeds, each worth 8 million wulongs. All the crew needs to do to maximize their profits is to capture Roco, Picaro, and the other gangsters, which shouldn’t be too hard, because Spike has a meeting set up with a trusting Roco. When they arrive, Spike tells Roco that he knows about the bounty and the grey ash plant, and Roco thinks that Spike is there to collect the bounty on him.

Many bounty hunters probably would. The sombrero gang from “Heavy Metal Queen” would. Hell, Faye probably would if she weren’t with Jet and Spike; she already expressed an interest in selling the grey ash. And had Spike not learned about Stella and the devastating effects of Venus sickness, it’s likely he would as well. Roco was just some kid who pestered him into teaching him martial arts. But Stella was right, and Spike really does have something beautiful inside him, despite his unfeeling and distanced outward personality and career choice.

Of course, Spike’s sympathy doesn’t extend past Roco, and he and Faye attempt to bring in Picaro and the rest of the gang. (Is it just me, or does Picaro dress like a Marvel villain from the 70s?) In the ensuing firefight, Roco is struck by a bullet, and Spike tries to help him. He yells at Roco not to die, but unlike when he did the same to Giraffe in “Sympathy for the Devil,” the emotions in Spike’s voice are empathy and sadness rather than greed. The idea of losing someone he has only just met is devastating after learning who he truly was. As Roco dies, he peacefully and hopefully wonders whether he and Spike would have been friends had they met at a better time in Roco’s life.

The episode ends with Spike visiting Stella one more time, who is now in a hospital and receiving treatment. This time, she is much more dismissive of Roco’s criminal activities upon hearing that Roco won’t be coming to visit. Initially assuming that Roco is in jail because he was doing something bad, she begs Spike to tell her what kind of person he was when she learns he died. Spike confirms to her that he was a terrific guy. The episode ends with a beautiful shot of the dangerous spores falling from the sky as Spike and Stella look on from their different locations.

Up next: As synthesizer music plays, we hear a new voice, a young girl who introduces herself as Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV. She tells us that she will be showing up, as Spike playfully asks who she is and Faye does the same, but in a much more annoyed manner. Like the preview for “Honky Tonk Women,” this introduces Ed as much as it does “Jamming With Edward,” (or, in this case, even more so); we hear Ed’s distinct speech patterns and use of youthful idioms. Next time, the cast will be complete.

Cowboy Bebop Session 7: Heavy Metal Queen

2011-11-27T16:10:00.001-06:00

The world of Cowboy Bebop isn’t just criminals and bounty hunters. Most of what we have seen so far has shown us just enough of the rest of the solar system so that we know it exists. People eat in restaurants, gamble in casinos, and attend the opera. But most of these settings exist to provide a cool, noirish or western background for our heroes to chase their prey. With very few exceptions, all POV is from the Bebop crew or the criminals they are chasing. One thing “Heavy Metal Queens” does very well is to give POV scenes to an interplanetary trucker, known only as VT. Through her, we see a completely different industry: shipping.

Of course other institutions still exist in 2071. But we’ve never seen any up close before. That’s probably because, aside from the trucks now being interplanetary spaceships, not much has changed in the shipping industry. Truckers communicate via CB radio using call signs (VT’s being “Heavy Metal Queen”) and eat at greasy spoon diners. And while stereotypes about groups of people exist, everyone still has their own personality, which is shown through images of different truckers’ cabs. Each one decorates it differently, with one covering all the walls with porn, and another with stuffed animals. Decker, this week’s bounty head, is a trucker who painted his rig with an image of Saraswati.

Speaking of stereotypes of groups, VT believes in some negative ones about bounty hunters, many of which are confirmed at a scene in a truck stop. She walks past a group of bounty hunters in sombreros and ponchos, talking about some famous bounty hunter. This group follow her in and begin harassing a waitress. As evidence of just how much of a crapsack world the Bebop characters inhabit is, the bounty hunters actually commit battery against the poor waitress, pulling her into their laps, and the only person who does anything about it is VT. As far as we know, no one, not even the waitress’ coworkers, call the police. If the bounty hunters are doing the jobs of the police, tracking down criminals, what happens when they get out of hand?

VT holds her own in the fight, but one against three is a hard ratio against which to maintain the upper hand. Fortunately, she gets help from a hungover Spike after one of the rambunctious bounty hunters causes him to drop an egg yolk in his lap. (He was going to make a mixed drink out of the yolk to cure his hangover.)

Spike was in the diner hunting for Decker, but was not doing well. In addition to his hangover, the information the Bebop crew received turned out to be paltry. All they knew was that he was in the area and he has a dragon tattoo. Faye scopes out a nearby kiddie ice cream parlor, and has finally become part of the team. There are still some kinks the team needs to work out (she says at one point that she has first dibs on Decker, and Jet still complains about her whining, but Spike refers to Faye as his friend and when Faye calls in to Jet with information about Decker, he is not unhappy to hear from her). Faye also uses her femininity to lure in the man she believes to be Decker; I guess the guys finally realized that Faye can bring things to the hunt that they can’t. As it turns out though, the big muscly guy she suspects to be her target is just a red herring; the real Decker is a scrawny, nervous, Woody Allen lookalike who overhears Faye’s plans to capture Decker. Faye realizes her mistakes and ID’s Decker, but not before he can escape and toss a powerful explosive at the Redtail, preventing Faye from pursuing.

Spike and VT get along well, bonding over fighting off the bounty hunters and “prairie oysters,” the egg yolk counter-hangover drink. VT says that she only ever knew one other person who drank them, her late husband. Unfortunately, their bonding is cut short when Faye calls in to say she found Decker. Unfortunately, the other bounty hunters vandalized Swordfish, disabling it, forcing both Spike and Faye to hitch a ride with VT. When they get back to the Bebop, Jet grumbles that Spike and Faye wrecked both ships on the same day and expect him to repair them. Earlier, he tried to assuage Ein’s whining about only getting bean sprouts for dinner, first telling him that bean sprouts are healthy before conceding that they are all the crew can afford. This week marks the seventh consecutive week without turning in a bounty head, so it’s a wonder how they can still afford food and parts with which to repair the Bebop and the three smaller ships. I think we are meant to assume that the adventures we don’t see are more successful, but even so, the crew is not doing too well.

Fortunately, they get a second chance at Decker when a trucker puts out a bulletin on a space truck with the image of Saraswati on it; Decker was in such a hurry that he cut off another trucker, nearly causing an accident. VT overhears this and realizes it is Decker, after overhearing Faye telling Spike about him. VT tracks down Decker and calls the Bebop, offering them the opportunity to capture him.

This sets up a great climax that shows us just how brave/crazy Spike can be. Decker flees into a mining asteroid and tries to get rid of his pursuers by releasing explosives to close off the shaft. He succeeds, but also kills himself in the process. Spike, Faye, and VT decide to use another explosive to reopen the shaft, but they have no way of positioning it without sacrificing one of themselves. Spike decides to program part of Swordfish to fly toward the end of the shaft with an explosive in it, but in order to get out alive, he has to jump from his ship to VT’s without a suit. At this point, the rule of cool takes over; it’s certainly awesome to see him risk his life in open space unprotected and use his pistol to propel himself in the right direction. It’s just a tad unbelievable, but the visuals more than make up for it.

We don’t learn much about the character’s pasts here, but the episode does a good job fleshing out the world and updating us on the team dynamic. It also shows us that Spike, Jet, and Faye are different from many other bounty hunters in the world. They may see other humans as price tags, in the words of VT, but they have an honor about them that not all bounty hunters possess, and VT accepts that Spike is in fact a good person.

Up next: Music box music plays as Jet explains that sometimes he does the preview alone. He introduces himself and gives his age – 36 – and says that not everyone thinks he looks 36. But not everything is as it seems. The next episode will embody that idea, and will be a different kind of story, but one worth telling…