I’m back from my vacations, so I’m picking it up where I left off: what I’m watching.
I’m currently on my second attempt to watch Cowboy Bebop. It’s an enjoyable show, but too often the plots feel repetitive. In quick succession, three additional characters (Ein, Faye Valentine, and Ed) are added to the original bounty-hunting duo of Jet and Spike.
The most interesting episodes are those that delve into characters’ backstories, such as Spike’s shady past, Jet’s more straight-laced one, and how the two of them came to be partners.
The show mixes science fiction and western, four years before the excellent Firefly series would premier in the States. Often, the show brings in an existentialist humor, the characters alive but no better off financially despite their efforts in the course of an episode.
Perfect example of this kind of humor takes place in the third act of my most recently watched episode, “Toys in the Attic.” An obvious send up of Alien, the episode features mysterious attacks on the crew, leaving only Spike to deal with the unknown threat, which turns out to be some sort of slime creature spawned from a lobster that Spike had squirreled away in a refrigerator below decks and forgotten for a year. It’s such a weirdly absurd origin for so dire a threat, but stands as the perfect example for the show’s refusal to take itself seriously.
There are 26 episodes in all. There’s also a movie and a live action adaptation of the show, which I’ll probably skip, but who knows. As I said, it’s enjoyable to watch, but repetitive enough that I only watch a new episode every few days or so. Find out how to watch it here.
The Chimerical Dark 