Cowboy Bebop Session #4: Gateway Shuffle

Session 4: Gateway Shuffle

"You Know what they say, cowboy, 'easy come, easy go.'"
"They also say, 'no honor among thieves.'"

"Jet is she sayin' what I think she's sayin, 'cause if she is..."
"I don't know and I have no opinion."
"She's takin' a shower in our shower. That's not okay, right?"
"Don't know and have no opinion."

We open the episode with Faye stranded; out of gas orbiting Jupiter. Looking for someone to bail her out, she picks up the signal of a wrecked ship. Jet and Spike, meanwhile, are at work, staking out their next target at an upscale restaurant. Jet makes what I believe is one of the first references to the gate disaster that happens some years before the series begins, which killed a bunch of people. Jet puts on a pair of sunglasses with computerized spy lenses that let him zoom in on their target and match what he looks like to his real face. Apparently in the future changing your face is pretty easy, as we already saw Abdul-Hakim do it in Stray Dog Strut. There's kind of an interesting shot, briefly, where we see a reflection of Spike in Jet's lenses--his false eyes. Spike, as we learn later, has a false eye himself. The guy they're watching, Morgan, looks like something out of Lupin the Third, sporting a big pompadour. He orders the sea-rat sautee, drawing the ire of the eco-terrorists, the Space Warriors dining next to him. They don sea-rat masks and open fire on him and his lady friends. They call their leader "mom," just like the lackeys of Mom from Mom's Friendly Robot Company from Futurama (they seem to be almost as inept sometimes). Jet remembers that she has a huge bounty on her head and Spike manages to stop her at gunpoint while her minions pile into the elevator.

Back to Faye, who finds a man dying amid the debris of his ship. He hands her something and tells her to hand it over to the ISSP--the police. On board the Bebop, Jet and Spike have "Mom", aka "Twinkle" Maria Murdock tied up. Jet gives a bit more exposition about the group, and that there's a bit of an issue. For some reason the Ganymede police (fyi, Ganymede is the largest moon of Jupiter) dropped the bounty on her yesterday. Are Spike and Jet shit out of luck again? Returning again to Faye, who opens the case to find a tiny little device inside. "Bebop" is full of little, insignificant looking, things that end up serving as the MacGuffin for the episode. Last episode we had the poker chip, and later in the series a chess piece will be important. At the Space Warriors headquarters, we learn that the police have canceled the bounty on "Mom" at the demands of the remaining Space Warriors who seem to have an ace up their sleeves: they're going to release a virus on Ganymede. Faye manages to contact Spike and Jet. They decide to bail her out, but handcuff her aboard the ship. Spike pulls out the mystery device from a random pile of Faye's stuff. Maria Murdock sees it and seems to know what it is.

Jet contacts one of his old acquaintances in the police, who begrudgingly tells him that the reason they canceled the bounty because of the threat to release the virus. Spike tries to break whatever the device Faye has open, and eventually shoots it and manages to free the tiny diamond shape in the center of it from the rest of it. Jet enters and tells Spike that they have no choice but to let Murdock go. Murdock contacts the Ganymede government and is apparently unsatisfied with their concession to limit, but not prohibit, the harvesting of sea-rats. They're still going to release the virus. Ganymede tries to intercept the Space Warriors' ship, but they find a decoy instead, Spike manages to find the real ship in hyperspace, but not before they release the virus, which we now see turns humans back into monkeys. Spike takes off in his red ship to try and intercept the missile carrying the vitus. Faye, meanwhile, has broken out of her cuffs and is gassing up her own ship. The missile splits into three separate parts. Spike gets two of the three but can't get to the last one. Faye can, and agrees to destroy it... for a cut of the bounty. As the Joker would say, "If you're good at something, never do it for free."

"Mom's" plan is foiled. To make matters worse, the tiny little diamond vial--she stole it from Spike on her way off the Bebop--falls out of her pocket and smashes against the wall of the ship. It was a vial of the virus, giving the ending of the episode a nice little "Frankenstein destroyed by his own creation" sort of flavor. Once again, though, Spike and Jet come up empty as far as bounty is concerned. Quelle surprise. Faye says "we'll do better the next time," apparently naming herself a member of the Bebop crew. So the episode ends with three fourths of the eventual crew in place (or I guess four-fifths if you want to count Ein).

This is another episode that shows just how brilliantly written "Bebop" is. The entire Space Warriors plot is a lot to get through in 25 minutes, while there's simultaneously a subplot to bring Faye back together with Spike and Jet. Yet they manage to make it compelling, and to establish the Space Warriors as bizarrely fascinating villains in that time, while not having it feel rushed at all. Next up we start getting into the meat of the series and the first appearance of Vicious.