Cowboy Bebop Session 11: Toys in the Attic

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