Over break, I rewatched the anime series, Cowboy Bebop, and once again I was incredibly impressed by it. I wrote about it after I finished watching it here, but I feel like I got even more out of it on the re-view. Much like Volume 2 of The Invisibles, it's a deceptively simple show, that gets you hooked with cool visuals and music, and then leaves you reeling at the end, where the very ideals that it seemed to espouse earlier in the series are revealed as something that we should definitely not aspire to.
One of the most interesting things about the series to me is the fact that it's essentially flawless. Whereas American shows evolve and change as they go along, with new characters and plots being developed over the course of the series, this series either was, or seems to have been, perfectly planned out from the beginning. In the opening credits, we can see images that we won't be given the context of until the final episode. Spike's backstory, as well as Faye and Jet's, is all there from the beginning, it's just that we don't find out about it until the series progresses. Much like The Office, the creators of the series seem perfectly in control of what they're doing, and each element seems to tie into the ending somehow. Even though I think Twin Peaks and Buffy are better shows, they are definitely flawed, and have lapses of logic that this series lacks. There's no confusion about character motivations or emotional arcs, it's all perfectly laid out. That's the advantage of a limited series, and the advantage of knowing where you're going from the beginning.
For most of the first season, the characters on the show are pretty emotionally closed off. They go around doing the cases and never seem to really be in any danger, or even particularly involved in what's going on. The cool music is playing, they fight some people, if they get the bounty, good, if not, whatever. Only in Ballad of Fallen Angels do we get hints of what's to come, not just plot wise, but also in terms of character relations. After Spike falls from the church, we find out that Faye has saved him and nursed him back to health, thus making her a parallel figure to Julia, as evidenced by the flashback structure at the end of the episode. This episode is the first time in the series that we find out that Spike can be hurt, and we see a foe who is too much for him, not to mention the fact that Faye also gets into serious trouble.
However, this episode is something of an anomaly, mostly stuff develops under the surface. As the season goes on, the Bebop gradually forms into something of a family. Whereas it was once just Jet and Spike, soon Ein, Faye and Ed join up, making the ship into something of a family, with Jet firmly in the father role, taking care of a little kid, and two teenagers, or grown up children, Faye and Spike, who basically do what they want, and ignore the logical advice that he gives them. It's played pretty much implicitly, but by the end of the season, they, with the exception of Spike, are all much closer than they would ever admit to each other. Spike remains emotionally removed from his new "family," a trend that continues as the series goes along.
The first season ends with a two part episode, Jupiter Jazz, which brings things back to Spike's past and the show's "mythology," but the B plot in this episode is just as important. First, this is an incredible episode. The music is probably the best in the series, particularly in Faye's story, when she goes to a film noir inspired bar, and hears Gren's saxophone solos. It's an incredibly moody sequence, as she sits there, alone at the bar, very Blade Runner. The other great musical cue is the music box song, and the song at the end of the two parter. Other than the final two episodes, this two parter is really the highlight of the series.
Everything is set in motion when Faye leaves the Bebop, and steals the money out of the safe. This is not uncommon behavior, she's known to come and go on her own, but Jet suspects that something is wrong, and says they should go look for her. Spike instead decides to follow a mysterious lead about the reappearance of Julia, and goes off to pursue his past.
Jet could easily have let Faye go, but instead he suspects she may be in danger, and as a result goes after her. What he doesn't know is the reason that Faye left, which is revealed in the scene with Gren, when she says she is afraid she's getting too close to them, and wants to leave before she reaches a point where losing them would be painful. While we don't know it at the time, the reason for Faye's evasiveness stems from the loss of Matsumoto that came right after she was removed from cryo freeze, three years prior. She was stuck with an enormous debt, which made her fear staying in one place, becasue staying in one place could lead to her getting forced to pay up for her past. Faye's debt is more than just a physical one, because she does not know what happened to her in the past, she is constantly on the run, and unable to settle down. She avoids any meaningful relationships and instead just drifts along. The crew of the Bebop are the people she has been the closest with since Matsumoto, and the thought that she might really care about them frightens her away.
However, she winds up in trouble when Gren shackles her, and locks her in his apartment. Over the course of the two episodes, we see Jet doing detective work, and eventually he finds her, and brings her back home to the Bebop. He says that he went after her because of the money in the safe, which she reveals was only $20,000, a very small amount, certainly not worth all the effort he went through. While neither of them says it outright, it's pretty obvious that Jet went after Faye because he cares about her, and did not want her to leave their ship. Faye knows this, and so does Jet, and at the end of the episode, they share a moment and grow closer. This paves the way for a different type of ship in season two.
On the other hand, we've got Spike, who is also running away from his "family," and for a similar reason as Faye did. Spike too has unresolved issues in his past, and rather than trying to live in the now, he's just biding his time, and waiting for an opportunity to find Julia and kill Vicious. In this episode he hears about something called code name Julia, and rushes off to investigate it. He finds Vicious, but gets shot, and misses his chance to find out about his past. In the second part of the episode, he finds Gren dying and tows him into space and sends him off to Titan. That's one of the most beautiful images of the entire series, a great moment. However, this episode is typical of Spike's behavior throughout the series. He shows no concern for Faye, his current comrade, but is willing to do anything to track down Julia. This is something that's a parallel to the end of the series, when Spike once again passes up the good things he has in the present to go after something he had lost.
The second chunk of the series is largely about coming to terms with the past and finding your place in the world. While this was also present in season one, it comes to the fore here, as the stakes are raised and the differences between the characters become much more apparent. While there's still a lot of screentime devoted to being cool, it's no longer really the focus of the series. The series takes on some heavier issues. All four characters are confronted with people from their past, and are forced to choose between lives they once had and a life on the Bebop.
The person who has the easiest choice is Jet. In the episode Black Dog Serenade, Jet goes after the terrorist who was supposedly responsible for Jet losing his arm. However, as the episode proceeds, he finds out that it was in fact his partner who did it, and Jet's partner kills Udai Taxim, and then allows himself to be killed by Jet. Earlier in the episode, Jet had rejected an offer to return to detective work, and when he kills his partner, he basically rejects the life he once had. The person he thought was his best friend had betrayed him, but rather than linger on it, Jet returns to the Bebop and firmly commits to his life there.
Back in season one, Jet had confronted an old girlfriend, and rather than trying to keep her with him, he let her go off to a new life. This combined with fighting Udai Taxim, creates a story that's parallel to Spike's relationship with Julia and Vicious. Jet was able to let go of his past, as shown when he tosses the watch into the water, and was not consumed by revenge. Spike cannot let go like Jet did, and as a result he can never be happy on the Bebop. In the second season, we see Jet getting closer to both Ed and Faye, and really notice him as the father of the ship. He cooks the meals and always brings his "family" together for dinner. Even if they don't have much food, he puts in an effort, and makes the best of the situation he's in, and in this way, his cooking parallels the way he lives his life. He may not have been given gourmet ingredients, but he sees Faye, Ed, Spike and Ein and lets them be his family and the people he cares about. Jet is the character who's most secure in his situation and there's never any doubt that the Bebop is the place he wants to be.
Unlike every other character on the show, Ed does not have a tragic past holding her back. She is not trying to get back to a place she once was, she's more of a drifter, and the Bebop is just a stop on the way. For most of the series, Ed doesn't seem to have any objective, but in the episode "Hard Luck Woman," we find out a bit about Ed's past, and the fact that she has a father. In the episode, Ed goes to a convent, where she had stayed for a while before going to the Bebop, and there, finds a message from her father. So, she puts out a bounty, which draws the Bebop to her father.
Now, Ed's story sort of contradicts what I consider to be the point of the series, the idea that trying to get back to the past is a bad idea, and that the people you're with and care about become your family. Ed does much the same thing as Spike, but it works out for her. I think the thing that makes Ed and Spike different is that Ed is happy whever she goes, and she feels that she has done enough on the Bebop. She may be going after her father, but she's also just moving on to something different. Much like with the convent, she enjoyed living there, but the time came to move on. I'm not sure whether Ed is going to her father, though that's what's implied, but maybe it's just to find out what happened, much like Faye needed to do in the same episode. She needs to confront her past for herself, and then make a decision. But, Ed has much higher hopes than any of the other characters, her spirit has not been broken. I see a bright future for Ed.
The second season sees the start of a new major arc, one that parallels what happens with Spike, and that is the tale of Faye's past. Over the course of three episodes, we find out what was only hinted at in season one, that Faye was alive roughly in our present, but got in a crash, and was cryo-frozen, only to awaken in 2068, deeply in debt, with only Matsumoto as a friend. Matsumoto worked at the cryo-freeze place, and says he fell in love with her while she was in cryo. She completely trusts him, and is in love with him, until he's "killed," at which point she is put further into debt, and begins to drift aimlessly, which she does until the Bebop picks her up.
What's important about Faye's story is that, like Spike, she is held back by her past. As we see in 'Jupiter Jazz,' she is afraid of committing fully to her life on the Bebop, because she's scared that she'll get betrayed again, like she was by Matsumoto. The only person she can remember who ever cared about her turned out to be just using her, and she has committed to never getting used like that again. It's notable that in 'My Funny Valentine,' when she's telling her story to Ein, and finds out that Spike was listening, she's annoyed. She doesn't want them to know about her past, or maybe she's scared that telling them would mean she'd really have to confront what happened to her, rather than run away from it more.
In 'Speak like a Child,' we see Faye once again running away, this time when a mysterious package arrives for her. She assumes that it's somehow related to her debt, but it is in fact a beta tape, with images from her past. I just have to give props to this episode, for the hilarious riff on beta vs. VHS, which would seemingly have no place in the story, but is pulled off quite well. But, that's not really the core of the episode. We see Faye at the dog tracks, throwing her money away, the same place she was when we first met her back in 'Honky Tonk Women.'
One of the subtly developed things throughout the series is the relationship between Faye and Jet. I don't consider it a romantic relationship, though he does love her, and she probably loves him as well, and possibly, in the space after the series, they could become romantically involved. However, in the series itself, I see it more as two people who were emotionally closed up, allowing themselves to be close with someone else for the first time in a long time. In 'Speak Like a Child,' Jet is at first annoyed and very casual about the tape, but when he sees Faye is on it, viewing the tape becomes a mission. He's angry at Spike for destroying the machine, and then goes to Earth to track down a Beta player. He sees this as an opportunity to help Faye, and it's his mission to do that.
When Faye sees the tape, she gets an insight into her past that evaded her for a long time. I love the section where she's cheering for herself, and talking about all the things she hopes she has, the whole series is about this longing for a better past, while drifting aimlessly through the present, and it's jarring to see young Faye, who clearly has a lot of hope about her future. She's not resigned to a miserable existence, and I think seeing that tape is part of what starts Faye's turnaround. After this episode, she becomes more concerned about her comrades, and about making her life better.
In 'Pierrot La Fou,' we see her expressing real concern for Spike, and ultimately saving him at the end of the episode. Because they are so close and essentially family, she goes to help him, even though she says she won't, and that's signifficant. 'Pierrot La Fou' also raises the stakes, Spike is no longer invulnerable, and his near death experience there is a rehearsal for the end of the series.
'Hard Luck Women' is a milestone episode for Faye, in the same way that 'Real Folk Blues' is for Spike. It is here that she is confronted with her past, and forced to choose between building a new life in the future or trying to get back to what could have been. She meets the old woman, who knew her years before, and again, runs away. She is perhaps afraid of finally finding out who she was, because doing that would mean she'd no longer have an excuse for the way she lives her life. However, after running away, she returns to where her house used to be, and in an absolutely dazzling sequence, we see Faye of different ages running up the hill to her majestic house, only to flash to the present and see that it's nothing but an empty lot, a pile of dirt. Faye draws a box in the dirt where her room used to be, and sits in it, and that's where the episode ends. So, Faye has finally found her past, and discovered that it's all gone.
This leads to the critical moment of change for Faye, that comes in 'The Real Folk Blues,' when she returns to the Bebop, and says that she had no other place to go, by extension revealing that they are her family now, and that she's not just passing through, the Bebop is her home. Much like Jet did, Faye has confronted her past and found her home. She is comfortable with them, and opens up more at the end of the series.
Probably my favorite scene in the entire series is when Faye finally opens up to Spike, and in tears, begs him not to go fight Vicious. It's notable because it's the only time we ever see any of the crew emotionally open up, and really say what they feel. Jet does not want Spike to go, but he tells Spike this by saying it's not worth throwing his life away, rather than saying I really care about you, don't go. Faye does just this, she finally opens up to Spike, and tells him that she got her memories back and it didn't make a difference, because she was already home, on the Bebop. The brilliance of this scene is the way it completes both Faye and Spike's character arcs. Both of them had spent the whole series trying to get back to their pasts, and resolve the issues surrounding the past. Faye finally did, and after finding her past, she realized that the home she was trying to get back to didn't exist, it was really the Bebop, where she'd been all along. The past doesn't matter, but she can't convince Spike of that, and he's off to make the same mistake she made, and run away from the people who really care about him. Faye sees an earlier version of herself in Spike, one who will also fail where she once did.
There's speculation that Faye doesn't want Spike to leave because she's in love with him. That's possible, but I think it's more likely that she just sees him as part of the ship family, and doesn't want him to leave for that reason. They have grown close, and she does not want him to die.
After Spike leaves, Faye and Jet are left on the ship together. Now, earlier in 'The Real Folk Blues,' we heard Spike talking about a woman who made him feel alive again, and Jet clearly is thinking of Faye when he says this. So, Jet has been reinvigorated by his time with Faye, and I'd imagine that the two of them go on as Spike and Jet did, back in the beginning of the series. When Jet thinks Faye has gone at the end of 'Hard Luck Woman,' he eats a lot of eggs, and to Jet, food is synonymous with human feeling. So, the eating is an attempt to get a piece of himself back that he has lost when Faye and Ed left. Then, in 'The Real Folk Blues I,' we see Jet and Spike alone in a bar, drinking and talking about how much they miss Ed and Faye. Faye has realized where her place is, and that will make Jet happier than anything else. After the initial sadness over Spike's death, I'd imagine they'll be quite the team.
Finding your home is what the series is about, and that's even reflected in a very small side story in 'The Real Folk Blues I,' the part where we see the host of Big Shot and his mother. His mother is sitting on a bench in the airport, angry because her son hasn't come to pick her up, and she says she doesn't want to be a hindrance to him, if he's not even going to pick her up, she's very angry. However, then we see her son, and it turns out that she has been waiting in the wrong place. It's not a problem for him to be with her, he wants her there, and this makes both of them happy. They've found their home, and that's together.
For Spike, finding his home is much more difficult because it's a place that doesn't exist anymore. For most of the first season, we see Spike as pretty much an invulnerable, very cool guy, the character most representative of the show's jazz aesthetic. Nothing phases him, and he's always slightly removed from the action. Only when we see him encounter someone from his past does he become emotionally connected to what's going on. The first occurrence of this is in 'Ballad of Fallen Angels,' which sees Spike emotionally present, and is also the first time Spike is physically injured. In this episode, we gets hints of Spike's past, during the falling from the church montage, an absolutely incredible sequence. At the end of this sequence, for the first time, we see doubling between Faye and Julia, the two women in his life. Spike imagines himself being cared for by Julia, but when he wakes up, he finds out it's Faye.
What does this tell us? First, it's Spike quite literallly living in a dream. As he talks about at the end of the series, with his eyes, he's spend most of his life in this dreamlike haze, and this is a great example of it. He's not connected with what's happening to him in the present, he's more involved in this memory of Julia, and that ties intoo the end of the series when, rather than staying with Faye and Jet, he goes off after something he lost and can never find again, this memory of what he once had.
The next big thing for Spike is 'Jupiter Jazz,' where he again chooses to go after something from his past, rather than their current comrade, Faye. Over the course of the second season, we see Spike becoming more and more reckless, and gets into more dangerous situations. In 'Wild Horses,' he's almost killed, and doesn't seem to care. In 'Pierrot La Fou,' he goes after Pierrot, despite having been defeated by him earlier, and against the advice of Faye. He doesn't consider what's practical, instead he follows a desire for revenge and an outdated moral code. Because Pierrot beat him, Spike cannot stand to let him go, he must defeat this foe in battle. This tendency is parodied in the brilliant 'Cowboy Funk,' where Spike meets someone who's just as stubborn as himself, Cowboy Andy. In the end, it's not even about fighting the terrorist bomber, it's about showing Cowboy Andy that Spike is in fact that the better cowboy, even if that means allowing a building to blow up.
We've seen Spike's stubbornness, and the damage he's been taking, but it doesn't all hit home until 'The Real Folk Blues,' where all the pieces of Spike's past that have been developing over the course of the series finally fall into place. We find out that Spike faked his death to escape the syndicate, and hoped to leave with Julia, but Vicious stopped Julia from meeting him, and held her hostage since. For Spike, faking his death has become in some respects a real death, he cut himself off emotionally, almost putting his life on hold, waiting for Julia to return. He doesn't make an effort to connect with others in the present, because he can only remember being alive in the past.
Spike finally does meet Julia, but the past that kept him alive now comes back and before they can even really spend time together, Julia is killed by the syndicate. For Spike, this is devestating because the one person he was living for, the only thing keeping alive is now dead. This ties into what the Indian guy says, when he talks about stars supporting each other, and if one star dies another might also. Spike goes back to the Bebop, but only to say good bye. He lets Jet serve him one last meal, and Jet knows that he's probably going to die. Jet says it's not worth doing this for a dead woman, but Spike says he's doing it to find out if he's alive. Spike has been dead so long, the only way he thinks he can return is to confront the person who "killed" him before. Jet understands Spike's code, and respects what he has to do, even though he clearly thinks it's the wrong decision, and if he had his way, Spike would stay on the ship, because even though they fight sometimes, Jet and Spike are very close, and the loss of Spike will be tough to take. Still, Jet never comes out and says what he's feeling.
Faye does, she opens up to Spike and for the first time, the two of them share everything with each other. Faye, who has resolved the issues with her past, begs Spike not to go, but just like Faye had to go to the house, Spike feels he needs to go to Vicious. Spike here says that he's always had one eye in the past, the physical manifestation of Spike's unwillingness to fully devote himself to the people on the Bebop. Even though he missed Ed and Faye when they left, it wasn't in the same way that Jet did. Spike is a drifter, while Jet is someone who can have a home and be happy with it. But, back to the Faye scene. Spike rejects Faye's good advice here, and in doing so, rejects the home that he has on the Bebop. Faye realized that the Bebop is the only place she can go back to, it is her home, not this place she vaguely remembers from the past. Spike can't make that realization, he still sees the Bebop as a stop along the way. That's the difference between them, Faye does find her home, Spike never does. That's why Vicious says that Spike will come to him, because he now has nowhere else to go.
So, Spike goes to Vicious, and in one of the definitive action sequences of all time, takes out a bunch of syndicate operatives. He gets to Vicious, they fight, and both die. It's fitting that this trio, Julia, Spike and Vicious, should all end up dead, because they were all already gone to some extent, it was only the physical body that was carrying on. Without Julia, life is meaningless for both Spike and Vicious, so they allow themselves to fight to the death.
The end of the show demonstrates the futility of revenge, but that's a rather obvious lesson. The more important idea it presents is the idea that Spike, the cool, hip, hero of the show was in fact horribly misguided in his attempt to get revenge. There's no idea that this is a noble sacrifice, something that had to be done. Instead, it's selfish, Spike has abandoned his family, the people who love him, as much as Julia ever did, in favor of once again trying to reach for something that isn't there, and now that Julia is dead, can never be again. What does killing Vicious accomplish? Nothing, it won't destroy the syndicate permanently, and it doesn't give Spike a new start. It's Spike's old fashioned morality, the feeling that he can't let someone one up him that drives him to do this, it's purely selfish.
However, it may have been something he had to do. Spike was so damaged, unlike Faye, he may never have realized that his place was on the Bebop. If he had stayed, he may have become more depressed and detached from the world. He was ready to die before Julia died, so with Julia dead, he'd certainly be even more willing to go. In the end, as the song over the end credits says, Spike finally was free of his past, and with the death of Spike and Vicious, we see the end of an outdated moral code, that says you have to seek revenge. Jet lets the man who took his arm go, while Spike can never forgive Vicious. Jet lives, while Spike dies.
It's notable that the series, which at first idolizes Spike, at the end disapproves of what he does. Audience sympathy is definitely with Faye and Jet at the end, or at least mine was. I was really annoyed that Spike went after Vicious and let himself die, when he's got people who really care about him right there. This disapproval of Spike is a huge change from the beginning of the series, where we see Spike as this impossibly cool guy, who never gets hurt, and can never be phased. At first, you'd think Spike's lifestyle is what the creators are espousing, but at the end it's far from it. There's a shift from valuing emotional detachment and cool, to valuing emotional connections, and concern. It's subtly done, and doesn't really hit you until that scene with Faye, but it's there the whole time. To me, Spike is someone you are in awe of at first, but as the series goes on, you realize all his flaws, the calm center that is Jet becomes a much more admirable character.
The song at the end, which talks about finally being free, it's not just about Spike. Jet is free of his emotional restrictions, and may be able to have a deep and meaningful relationship with Faye. Faye is free of her emotional "debt," and the burden of her past. She is ready to start moving towards the future. The Bebop will carry on, without Spike, because while Faye and Jet dealt with their past and found their home, it's something Spike could never do. Rather than living in the present, he kept reaching for an idealized past, and in this show, the longer a character lives in the past, the shorter their future.
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