Cowboy Bebop Session #5: Ballad of Fallen Angels

After somewhat of a hiatus, I'm back...

I'm just watching a bad dream I never woke up from.

Session 5: Ballad of Fallen Angels

The first image we see coming out of the opening is a man pricking his thumb and signing a letter in blood, continuing with the whole red/blood color theme the series has going. We're at some sort of a meeting of two crime lords (seemingly) forming an alliance. There's an interesting shot where they shake hands, one wearing an all suit, the other wearing all white, with one half of the room bathed in light coming in from the window and the other half obscured in shadow. It creates a yin-yang sort of effect. A few seconds later (I have it paused at 02:12 right now), we get a shot angled from above where we see the bright light outside, while columns in front of the window cast bar shaped shadows on the floor. This is sort of chiaroscuro effect is something you see a lot in noir movies. It's often said to be a metaphor for characters being imprisoned by something--visually their "behind bars." We learn that the man in the black suit is a member of the Red Dragon clan (color theme!). As he watches the other gang faction speed away, suddenly their ship explodes and he turns around to see himself with a sword at his neck. We get our first shot of Vicious walking in from behind, his massive bird squwaking on his shoulder. As Vicious kills the man in the black suit, we cut to a shot of the bird's big blood red eye, then to blood spilling on the floor. With his last words, the man in black insists, "if Spike were here, you would never have done this," and after Vicious smirks we cut to a shot, I guess from somewhere else in the room of a sculpture on the wall with two cherubs. This shot is in the same sort of washed out bluish-gray light as the very first flashback scene back in "Asteroid Blues." Feathers slowly descend across the shot. Then we get the title screen.

On board the Bebop, Spike is lobbying Jet, trying to convince him to pursue a bounty on the head of the Red Dragon clan leader who we just saw get killed. Mao Yenrai is his name, we learn. Faye enters and interrupts their argument, a distraction that Spike uses to leave by himself. Jet is not happy and leaves the room. Faye gets a message about "something big" that's meant for Jet. While doing this, she picks up a ace of spades on the ground from a deck that Spike was shuffling. Not the first time we've seen poker cards. Following the lead, Faye runs off and ends up at an opera. She ends up in Mao Yenrai's box with a gun at her back. Elsewhere, Spike visits a surly convenience store owner who is convinced that he died three years ago. She has a framed photo of Yenrai behind the counter. Spike asks what happened to him. We don't hang around for the answer. Switching back to Faye, she realizes that whoever has her captured at the moment has Mao's body propped up in one of the seats of the opera box. Vicious enters and tells Faye his name. Halfway point break.

Back at the convenience store, the owner, Annie is a bit drunk and telling Spike not to get involved with Vicious while opining about Mao's death. The next scene is Spike back aboard the Bebop, but in between is a are two completely silent shots, one of a stained glass window depicting a heavenly looking scene in a darkened room, followed by the shadow of Vicious bird obscuring the purple-ish light from the window on the floor. On the Bebop, as Spike is getting his various weaponry ready, Jet reveals that he knows Mao is already dead and that Spike would be walking into a trap if he were to go after his bounty. Spike says that he knows but that he "has a debt to pay off." Trying to convince Spike not to go, Jet very vaguely alludes to how he lost his arm by "being too gung-ho." At the end of the series, there will be another scene aboard the Bebop where Spike tells Faye how he lost one of his eyes. That scene will end the same way, with Spike running off to deal with elements of his past. A message comes in from Faye, handcuffed to a pole, announcing that she "kinda got herself caught."

As we switch scenes again, Spike approaches a giant cathedral under cloudy skies, tinted with an eerie purple hue. In between shots of Spike walking in and Vicious crouched down waiting with his big sword in hand, we get glimpses around the cathedral, including several of the stained glass windows from before. Spike gets into a gunfight with Vicious's men. In the commotion, Faye gets away and flees out of the church. Vicious eventually gets Spike pinned down to the ground, and while telling him that he looks like a ravenous beast, we cut to a low-angle shot of a cross somewhere in the cathedral, buried in shadows. Anime directors seem to love throwing in Christian symbolism. Maybe the most well known example is Evangelion, which is steeped with it. Spike shoots Vicious in the shoulder, who simultaneously stabs him in the shoulder. Vicious recovers and throws Spike out of the big circular window. As Spike falls, we continuously see an extreme close up of his fake eye--his red eye--intercut with scenes from his past, some of which we saw at the very beginning of "Asteroid Blues." We see our first real glimpses of Julia, which always seem to be encased in a golden color scheme, contrasting the washed out blue-gray of the rest of Spike's memories. We also at one point see the same shot of the cross again. Spike thinks he hears Julia singing. He wakes up and sees Faye. He insults her singing and Faye slaps him and storms out of the room. In the commotion, Spike ends up with a poker card on his forehead. He picks it up. It's the ace of spades.

As I said, anime directors seem to love throwing in Christian symbolism, sometimes for seemingly no real reason and maybe the use of the symbolism here begins and ends with that. The intercutting of religious symbols with violence, though, is also something that Francis Ford Coppola used to great effect in his crime epics, the Godfather films, notably the baptism scene at the climax of the first film, and the scene where Vito is climbing rooftops to kill the Black Hand as there's some sort of a religious festival going on in the streets. Godfather III (mehhh...) also has an extended opera scene at the end, where a guy ends up getting poisoned and slumps over dead in an opera box. Maybe that inspired the opera scene in this episode, I dunno.

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.

Cowboy Bebop Session #3: Honky-Tonk Women

Session 3: Honky-Tonk Women

In appearance and attitude, Faye Valentine represents the classic noir style femme fatale character. Perhaps take out the parts where she's kept in suspended animation for a few decades and where she's, you know, in outer-space (and I guess the purple hair as well), and she'd fit right into a Dashiell Hammett or Mickey Spillane story. She's as alluring as she is strong-willed, and seems to personify trouble. Later on in the series, she'll actually more play the role of the redeemer character--another archetype for female characters used in a lot of films in the noir period--the character who tries to save the protagonist from being destroyed by the true femme fatale character. That all comes later though. We see her from the ground up, starting with her big white boots, as she walks into a shop on Mars, apparently getting tailed by three guys. She pulls a sub-machine gun out of a grocery bag and opens fire. "The first rule of combat is to shoot them before they shoot you," she explains. She doesn't get shot, but she gets caught as a bunch more people show up. We get our title card, and the next time we see Faye, she's back out in space on a floating casino in handcuffs. She's speaking to a man who refers to her as "Lady Luck", "Poker Alice", and the "Queen of Hearts" (red!). He apparently offers her an ultimatum to keep her from being turned over to the police--the details of which we're not privvy to at the moment--and with a flick of his wrist produces an Ace of Hearts (also red!)

Spike and Jet are also in the casino, on an elevator talking about a dream that Jet had. They hit the casino floor, and after a brief stop off with the three old codgers who we first saw in Asteroid Blues and who will pop up from time to time throughout the series, we see Faye again, now dealing at a blackjack table. She produces a blackjack hand with the Queen of Diamonds and the Ace of Hearts, two red cards. Spike starts playing at her table, and starts winning. We get something of a dream sequence as Spike gazes at her and we flip between a bunch of quick shots of slot reels and roulette wheels spinning. We then flashback to Faye's meeting with the mysterious well-dressed man. He explains that all she has to do is wait for her "target" to arrive, who will lose all of his chips and give his last one to her as a tip, which she is to deliver to this man. Spike ends up losing everything he's won except his last chip, and decides to "keep it as a souvenir." Thinking him to be the target going back on the deal, Faye runs off after him. The actual target, not sure what just happens, runs off as well. While leaving, Spike turns around to see someone winning a slots jackpot, and runs into the target, causing both of them to drop their chips. They end up picking up each other's chips. Faye finds Spike and tells him that he's ruining the deal. Spike reveals that he noticed she was cheating the entire game, and swallows his (or actually the target's chip). Spike gets into a tussle with a bunch of security guards, much to the chagrin of Jet, while Faye remotely activates her ship. The casino execs put a price on Faye's head, as Faye gets captured by Spike and Jet on her way out and they lock her up in the Bebop's bathroom.

Jet analyzes Spike's chip and finds that there's a chip (the computer kind) hidden within the chip (the poker kind). This leads us in to another exciting episode of "Big Shots: The Bounty Hunters!" Faye managed to get herself on the show. Faye contacts Gordon--the head casino guy--with some sort of transmitter disguised as a lip gloss container and tells him that her captors have the chip. Spike and Jet decide that they're doing to turn in Faye for the 6 million wulong reward, which Faye decides is somewhat low-balling her worth. Gordon contacts Jet, and Jet reveals that he knows the chip-within-a-chip is a sort of master decryption key that the police misplaced some time ago and have been looking for ever since. Spike gets into a space suit, with boots that can apparently latch onto the side of a ship at the push of a button, and in a cool little sequence floats his way over to the ship with the casino brass. The deal is that Spike is going to flip them the chip at the same time they're going to flip a briefcase full of 30 million wulongs to Spike. Unsurprisingly, this is not actually how they're planning on having it go down in reality. A casino lackey opens fire on Spike, but mistimes it so his shots hit a rotating mechanism going around the outside of the ship. By the time its rotated past them again, Spike is gone floating upwards again. Faye meanwhile has picked her locks and escapes in her ship. Spike catches the chip, while Faye snatches the briefcase with a detachable claw. Team Casino opens file on Faye, but come closer to shooting Spike than her ship and end up getting blown up with one of their own missiles. At the end of the episode, Spike and Jet are walking into the casino again, musing that all the chip is good for now is one bet. Its another ending where the Bebop crew are surviving, but not thriving, such is their plight. Spike turns around watches Faye zoom off in the distance, looking from far away a bit like a shooting star.

The main purpose of this episode is to introduce Faye as the female lead of the series, but its a fun episode on its own merits. The shootout in space is a creative twist on your standard wild west-style showdown. Up next, we meet the eco-terrorists led by a crazy woman who reminds me vaguely of Mom from Futurama in Gateway Shuffle.

Cowboy Bebop Session #2: Stray Dog Strut

Session #2: Stray Dog Strut

A guy in a bathroom stall is unwrapping bandages that were over his face. He's sporting a big afro and some gawdy jewelry. Three guys with guns position themselves in front of the stall door and tell "Abdul-Hakim" to come out. Almost in one fluid motion, Abdul-Hakim knocks all three of them out and calmly walks away carrying a briefcase. Seeing as he's a tall black guy who knows martial arts, I think Abdul-Hakim may be a nod to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who studied martial arts, and was the veritable "final boss" at the end of the pagoda that Bruce Lee was fighting his way through in Game of Death, the movie he was filming when he died. Also he was a vampire. Seriously, its sort of awesome. And actually, going to the IMDB page, his character's name was Hakim, so that would seem to increase the chance that I actually know what I'm talking about. We get our title screen--"Stray Dog Strut"--and then see the Bebop cruising through the gates on its way to Mars.

Aboard the Bebop, Spike kicks the TV, which is coming in as white noise--weirdly still a problem in the future--and gets it to work, and we get our first glimpse at Big Shots: The Bounty Hunters. I'm convinced that this needs to be made into an actual show. I never make a point to watch "America's Most Wanted" with John Walsh, though I do hear that that show has had a lot of success over the years in terms of getting people to give valuable information to the police that eventually lead to the capture of some high profile suspects. Now, if it was a black guy and a ditsy blonde girl inexplicably wearing cheesy cowboy outfits and telling me how to "wrassle up some criminals" I know I'd totally watch that show. I think the execs at Fox have some retooling to do. Anyway, the Big Shots hosts tell us that Abdul Hakim is a notorious criminal and in his latest caper he stole an experimental lab animal. Conveniently, as the show's ending, Spike gets a videophone call from "Doc", who had his lab busted up by Hakim, and who has a description of his face post-plastic surgery (hence the bandages). The game is afoot.

Back on Mars, Hakim ducks into a little hole-in-the-wall Chinese bar (literally ducks in, as he's taller than door) and asks for some lao chu. The drink is red, maybe fitting in with the whole red motif I mentioned in the previous Bebop post, or maybe just coincidentally. A scruffy looking guy runs into him at the far and tries to apologize, and is somewhat miffed when his apology is met with silence. Abdul-Hakim grabs a cockroach crawling across the table, drops it in his drink, and shoves it down the guy's throat. During the tussle, a man with glasses manages to sneak in, grab the briefcase, and run off with it. He hops on the back of the trunk, opens up the case, and is surprisingly met with a growling noise. Elsewhere, two guys in white coats are driving another truck, discussing how Hakim took out three of their associates and how Hakim has no idea how much "that thing" he's carrying is worth. Spike talks to the proprietor of a weapon's shop who talks like he should be in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, and who tells him he'll find what he's looking for at a pet store. The spectacled man is trying to sell whatever's in the briefcase to the somewhat eccentric pet store owner, when he sees Spike, in an amusing moment, watching him through the other side of a fish tank. Spike takes him to be Abdul-Hakim with another new face. The store owner opens the case and produces... a pembroke welsh corgi! Spike leaves as the guy attempts to talk the pet store owner into giving him more than the 2 wulongs she says the dog is worth. Abdul-Hakim shows up and puts a gun to his back and asks for it back. Quite a commotion breaks out, and Spike sees Hakim come running out as he's walking away dejected. Suddenly he's interested again. The two guys in white coats follow in their truck as well.

Hakim runs after the dog while Spike runs after Hakim. In a great rule of threes bit, the chase brings them in the path of a crowd of people watching two guys play a game of Go. The corgi ducks under the table on which they're playing, Hakim swiftly jumps over it, and Spike, uncaring, just crashing through it, sending pieces flying. Then the two guys in white coats show up and stop in their tracks as the Go crowd just scowl at them, crouched over the ruins of their board. Spike catches up with Hakim and they have themselves a bit of a spar, seemingly being roughly equal in skill. The corgi thinks, "to hell with this" and jumps down onto a passing barge. Spike and Hakim both jump down after it. Spike ends up falling in the river, but comes up with the dog. Spike brings the dog back to Jet, who confirms that its just a regular corgi and nothing else, but seems to take a liking to it--moreso than Spike, who is just annoyed by the whole concept of pets. The dog's owner, however, is worth a fortune, says Jet, and he has a plan.

The two guys in white coats, meanwhile, are back in the truck, with some of their also white coat-wearing brethren, still trying to track down what they now describe as a "data dog." Spike takes Ein for a stroll down the street, as Hakim tries unsuccessfully to postpone a meeting with the guy he's supposed to meet up with when he has the dog. Hakim gets stopped by an old man sitting on the sidewalk who says he can tell that he's looking for something, and insists that Pico, his tiny little bird, can help him find it. Begrudgingly, Hakim hears what he has to say. The men in white coats decide they need to turn on the dog whistle, which Ein (they haven't named him in the epsiode yet, but I'm just going to say it. Tired of writing "the corgi") and about a hundred other dogs hear, causing them to start yapping and following the truck. The fortune teller tells Hakim that Pico has picked the moving card and that what he's looking for is about to move, and then says its here just as the big cluster of dogs run down the street being Hakim. This is the second time in as many episodes that a character has gone to a sort of mystic or a spiritual guide for answers and they've pointed them in the correct direction (in "Asteroid Blues", the old Native American mystic tells Spike where to find the "red-eyed coyote). Of course, in Hakim's case, he likely would've figured it out anyway when he heard a cacophony of yapping dogs, but I find it interesting nevertheless. The dog catchers try and launch a net to catch Ein and manage to catch every dog except him. Hakim steals a car from a newly wedded couple, almost runs down Spike, and picks up Ein. Spike gets into his red ship (pretty sure it has a name that I can't recall right now) and pursues Hakim. Ein bites Hakim and jumps out of his car, causing Hakim to lose control. Spike goes after the tumbling Ein ("this is why I hate pets!") and manages to catch him safely on the wing of the ship. Hakim and the dog catchers both go spilling off the side of the road and into the water. Spike brings back Ein to the Bebop and still hasn't warmed up to him, suggesting, maybe only half jokingly, that they just salt him and eat him.

This is more of a lighthearted, comedy-of-errors sort of episode, and there's not that much to discuss in terms of the overarching themes of the show. Its one of my favorite episodes though, with a bunch of genuinely funny bits and an amusing story that manages to throw in a pretty bulky cast of characters and still come to a resolution in just over 20 minutes. Except for maybe "Venture Bros." (new episodes start up again Sunday!), I'm not sure if I know of another half hour show that does that as well as "Bebop." Up next, we meet Faye in what she describes in the episode preview as "a stardust session played in an off-key melody."

Cowboy Bebop Session #1: Asteroid Blues

I'm going to keep going with my FF7 posts, but I've developed a hankering to re-watch "Cowboy Bebop", far and away my favorite anime, and indeed one of my favorite TV series regardless of its country of origin or whether its animated or live action. The show has a certain brilliance in a way that it melds a bunch of different genres and themes, yet also exudes a style all its own. Its not like Kill Bill, which is almost just four hours worth of Tarantino coming up with random B-movie references (not that that's necessarily a bad thing, I really like Kill Bill as well). The movie builds off of a lot of other things: film noir, westerns, science fiction, martial marts movies; but in the end it isn't a hodgepodge collection of all of these things. The sum total of it is something more. As egotistical as the tag line--which you see in some of the background of the bumps coming in out of the commercial break and elsewhere--may sound its kind of true: "The work, which becomes a new genre itself, will be called 'Cowboy Bebop.'"

Basically my plan is to just start watching and write down my thoughts as I go. Some of it may pertain to what I'm watching at that exact moment, other times it may be larger themes of the whole series. At any rate, let's start with episode 1.

Session #1: Asteroid Blues

The series shows its noir influence from the very outset. The scene that serves as our introduction is a rainy alleyway. Everything is a muted blue color, almost making it look like a sepia tone. Our first glimpse of Spike is of him standing, nursing a half-smoked cigarette, with his head down and his eyes obscured in shadow. We hear a very melancholy sounding music box playing. Music boxes are a pretty widely used storytelling device, I think. The first thing that comes to mind for me is A Few Dollars More, where you'd hear the same sort of music box tune every time there would be a flashback of Indio, the villain, and his ex-lover. I don't know if the usage in "Bebop" is a direct homage or if Dollars inspired it, but I know that Shinichiro Watanabe, Bebop's director, and the rest of those involved with the series know their Man with No Name movies, because there's a more obvious The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly reference later in this episode. Spike drops a rose in a puddle as he walks away. The red in the rose stands out against the bluish-black background. We start to see quick cuts of Spike in a bloody shootout with a group of gunmen who we don't know anything about right now. Again, the color red stands out in the washed out looking scene. I think the color red is tremendously important in the series. Already, I can think of a bunch more places that it comes up. The music box tune comes to a stop, and we cut to the series's standard opening, complete with its theme song, "Tank", which I have nothing to say about other than its one of the coolest damn openings ever.

After the opening, we get the title screen and see that we're watching "Asteroid Blues" and get treated to, appropriately enough, blues music on a harmonica. We meet Spike and Jet, cruising through space on their way to Earth, and, inbetween Spike complaining about the lack of beef in Jet's bell peppers and beef dinner, we deduce that they're bounty hunters. Jet has their next target lined up, who's hiding out in Tijuana. In the future, its hard out here for a bounty hunter, and Spike and Jet are broke, as they are pretty much perpetually throughout the series. Jet and Spike, as we'll pick up on throughout the series, started out on opposite sides of the law and kind of met in the middle. Jet was an ex-cop, Spike is a ex-crime syndicate member, and now they're both bounty hunters. They're both sort of half "flawed": One of Jet's arms is prosthetic, and, we find out much later, one of Spike's eyes is fake as well.

Down on the surface, in a dusty old bar in TJ, Asimov walks in, looking a bit like Antonio Banderas in Desperado, with his pregnant lady friend, the femme fatale of the episode. Asimov follows the bartender in the back and is trying to sell him some "red eye" or "bloody eye" (again, the color red shows up), evidently the street drug of choice in the future, which you spray directly into your eyes. Asimov's whole vision turns red, and the drug seems to give him superhuman reflexes as he literally dodges bullets when a gang of men start shooting up the bar. Spike, meanwhile, having landed, is consulting a Native American mystic regarding Asimov's whereabouts. The mystic is a character who sort of bookends the series. He's here at the beginning, shows up again in the middle, and is there again at its very end. He tells spike that the "red-eyed coyote" will appear north of town, and then: "death." Spike, nonchalantly, says "he was killed once before, by a woman." As Spike turns to leave, says somewhat ominously, "Wakan Tanka, guide his spirit," and we get a close-up show of him blowing away a lump of sand from the palm of his hand. We're far removed from the unpleasantness at the series's end, but even here Spike seems to be a character whose fate has been sealed.

Jet, meanwhile, visits the now-destroyed bar, and gets some information out of two guys who show up mentioning that they need to get the bloody eye back. Spike, landing to get gas, happens to run into Asimov in passing in the bathroom, and then--much more literally--runs into his lady friend, and gets caught stealing a hot and a bunch of her other groceries. Evidently she finds a certain charm in this, and they speak flirtatiously for a bit as Spike gasses up. Eventually, Spike reveals that he's a bounty hunter. Turns out, Asimov was right behind Spike listening in, and almost chokes him to death but stops at the behest of the woman. They get in their ship and fly away and the girl tells Spike as he's laying on the sidewalk, "Adios, cowboy." Jet finds Spike, still laying on the ground, passed out, and after Spike comes to announces that the job's not worth it, but Spike knows that Asimov is going to Mars after he sells his bloody eye, and he stole a sample of it during their tussle. Spike, in disguise, sets up a deal to buy bloody eye from Asimov, and Asimov tries to pull out the vial of it that he no longer has. Spike pulls off the goofy sombrero he's wearing, reveals the vial he has, and asks Asimov, "Do you know how much you're worth?" He's wearing a poncho that looks a lot like Blondie's from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and that's what Blondie asks of Tuco in the movie. Spike and Jet are a lot like detective characters in a noir crime story, but they're also not at all unlike gunslingers in a spaghetti western movie. The episode "Cowboy Funk" much later on in the series, will pit Spike against a literal cowboy, and gives us more of the spaghetti western influence on the series, complete with music that sounds a lot like an Ennio Morricone soundtrack.

Spike and Asimov have another tussle, but their interrupted by more gangsters trying to gun down Asimov. In the chaos, his girlfriend is nicked by a bullet and we she that she's the one carrying the big stockpile of bloody eye because the vials all come spilling out onto the ground. Asimov is furious that she almost lost them, and, looking into his eyes, the girl realizes that he doesn't really care about her at all, just the drugs. With a somber jazz saxophone tune playing, Asimov, drugged up to all hell, flies up off planet and into space, tailed by Spike. With a blockade of police ships looming ahead, the girl decides enough is enough, and shoots Asimov as Spike, his ship now side-by-side with theirs, watches, horrified. Before she dies, she tells Spike again "Adios." Their ship gets riddled full of bullet holes, and the girl drifts out into space, leaving a trail of red eye vials. At the end of the episode, Spike and Jet are again aboard the Bebop, Jet again making up some "bell peppers and beef." They're back to where they were at the start of the episode. C'est la vie.

The episode first and foremost introduces us first and foremost to two of our main characters, Spike and Jet, the original Bebop crew. Jet is more of a wiser, calculating man, Spike is more wreckless and impatient, yet also has this dark, somber aura about him. It also establishes the noir overtones that are going to pervade the series. It tells a self-contained story where the protagonists track down the antagonist they're seeking, and make it out of a fight with him alive, but the resolution is anything but happy. Spike, already having been "killed by a woman once," here watches as a woman dies needlessly, her only crime seemingly being hooking up with the wrong guy. Their brief flirtation suggests that maybe, had she escaped and fled with Spike, maybe she could've been happy, but in a noir story, characters always seem bound by their fate, and dreams can never really manifest themselves into reality.

The next episode is a much more light hearted one, and one of my favorites--Stray Dog Strut--where everyone's favorite Pembroke Welsh Corgi makes his first appearance.