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.
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