Funny / Cowboy Bebop (2021)

Spoilers off for moments pages. You have been warned!

---

Session #1: Cowboy Gospel

• The robbers spend most of their heist ranting about the evils of corporations. The boss got fired from a casino for stabbing a pit boss in the eye. Then the pit boss got fired for having only one eye.
• The boss takes a hostage. Spike is unimpressed.
  Spike: What? Seriously? She's your hostage?
  Jet: Spike.
  Spike: I mean, she's like, what? Eighty?
  Jet: Spike!
  Spike: I'm just saying, she looks like she's lived a full, rich life. I mean, you probably have kids, right? You're ready to go?
  Woman: [shakily nods]
• Just like in the anime's movie, the opening robbery sequence is interrupted by someone leaving the bathroom after taking a dump...in the middle of a heist.
• Spike and Jet's look of shock and resignation after one of the robbers blows a hole in the station's hull with a disruptor, moments before the vacuum rips the wall wide open.
• Jet griping about the tolls.
  Radio: Astro Gate toll will be deducted from your account.
  Jet: I'm gonna take a piss in transit. Wanna charge me for that too?
  Radio: We already do, Bebop. Read the Fine Print.
  Jet: *Disgusted look*
  • Adding to this moment: who is the ornery toll booth operator? Why, it's Steve Blum!
• Spike and Jet really need to think of better passwords.
  Faye: Hey computer, find me whoever owns this piece of shit boat.
  Computer: PASSWORD REQUIRED.
  Faye: *Looks around, sees it written on a sticky note nearby* Fucking idiots.

Session #2: Venus Pop

• Bounty hunters apparently get their info from a cheesy, low-budget television show starring two actors in cheap cowboy costumes. They even set up a scoreboard for highly competitive bounties.
• Spike and Jet are at a church looking for the episode's Mad Bomber. Jet wants Spike to look out for anyone suspicious, to which Spike responds that Jet is the most suspicious looking guy there. Jet protests that as a former cop, he knows how to blend in. Cut to a Reveal Shot, which shows...Jet very much not blending in.
• Spike and Jet get into an argument in front of someone they're interviewing. He is left very confused.
  Foreman: I've seen the Good Cop/Bad Cop routine, but never the dick-cop asshole-cop.
• The explosives supplier, the one who Spike and Jet suspect is the one planting bombs in teddy bears, is named... Theodore.
  Spike: Wait, hang on. Your bomb guy is named Teddy?
• Jet almost steps on a Booby Trap...
  Spike: Step on that, you'll be wearing your asshole for an ascot.
• Spike and Jet find their target wearing nothing but briefs and a giant teddy bear mask. Said mask makes it nigh-impossible for either of them to understand what he's saying.
• The Big Bad's motive. Money? No. Politics? No. Recognition? No...he just likes the halo that the bombs create when they explode.

Session #3: Dog Star Swing

• When they need information, Jet says "We need Woodcock." Spike's response? "I'm praying that's a person."
  • Spike trying to ask Jet Did They or Didn't They?
    Spike: So did you two...
    Jet: Spike.
    Spike: Seriously though -
    Jet: Spike.
• Jet activating the Face-Changer jammer, which leads to some amusing side effects at the Red Light District.
  Spike: [sees a young woman with a customer turn into an old woman] He's in for a surprise.
• The fact that dogs are a rare luxury that only the super-rich can afford, with Spike commenting that they're "harder to move on the black market than diamonds."
• The bounty's motive is rather sad—when the rich fled Earth, they abandoned the people but took their pets, so he decided to kill their dogs in revenge. The hilarious part is that he proves utterly incapable of shooting such adorable puppies.
• The bounty is about to commit suicide, since his life is so worthless, but Spike and Jet convince him he is worth something—fifteen million, in fact!
  Bounty: ...is that high?
  Spike: Well, I mean it's not our highest bounty—
  Jet: Spike.
  Spike: Yeah, sure man, highest bounty we've ever seen.
  Bounty: ...okay. Yeah, that seems fair. You guys get your scratch, and I go to prison. It's what a shit-heap like me deserves.
  Spike: We gotta do something about your self-esteem, man.

Session #4: Callisto Soul

• The utterly incompetent ecoterrorists whose mother berates them in front of the hostages.
  • Speaking of hostages, she doesn't understand why they took a hostage with them when they escaped.
    Mama: WHY WOULD YOU TAKE A HOSTAGE!?
• Spike having to explain to Jet what a bidet is (Jet thinks they're for cleaning toejam):
  Jet: Next big score, I'm getting one for the ship. Maybe two, one for each foot.
  Spike: Foot?...Jet, a bidet is a toilet that cleans out your asshole.
  Jet: *Genuinely confused* What?
  Spike: *Looks at Jet's feet suspiciously*
• Faye, covered in blood, barges into the diner where Spike and Jet are having dinner and excitedly tells them about the ecoterrorists who just turned people into trees. Spike and Jet think she's high until a confused newscaster appears on the TV and confirms everything she's saying.
  Reporter: According to eyewitness reports, the toxic gas turned people into...trees? (Turns off-camera) Are you serious with this? Oh shit, that's nutbags.
• The menu is seen so briefly that it's easy to miss that one of the menu items is made from the same animal the ecoterrorists are so upset about. Another is named the Dahmer Burger, and still further down are Mushroom Samba and Royale With Cheese.
• Throughout the episode, Spike and Jet keep referencing someone called "the Cosmonaut," and how Faye reminds them of this person. They find this hilarious, but refuse to explain. Faye tries to make learning the full story part of the deal to split the profits, but they ignore her.
• When Faye sees Ein, she immediately kidnaps him. She can't decide whether to sell him or eat him.
• For some reason, the ecoterrorists decided to throw all of Faye's stuff out of her ship.
  Faye: Rude.
• Faced with the prospect of being stuck in a prison cell with her mother for the rest of her life, Harrison decides to commit Murder-Suicide with the spore grenades instead.

Session #5: Darkside Tango

• All the hot water on the Bebop is used up because of Faye's shower-bath-shower. You take a shower to get clean, a bath to relax, and then another shower to finish it off. She also suggests they invest in a nice loofah. The boys just stare at her.
  Faye: Were you two raised by wolves?
• Faye suggests they go after the biggest bounty on the board. Spike has concerns.
  Spike: He eats people.
  Faye: So?
  Spike: It took seven guys to take him down last time, and he ate two of their faces. I like my face. As do many other people.
• Spike finally agrees to go after the big-ticket cannibal... only for the bounty show to announce that he just killed a whole slew of bounty hunters, so the cops have called in the snipers and have withdrawn the bounty.
• Faye uses Ein to act out a mission where she danced with a target to disarm him. When she punches out the target, she tells Ein to play dead, as if he's an actor missing a cue.
• At the end, Spike is now in agreement with Faye about the shower-bath-shower.
  Spike: Now, tell me about the loofah.

Session #6: Binary Two-Step

• Spike compares a fugitive cult leader with a long-standing bounty to Bigfoot. Jet "corrects" him by saying that they caught Bigfoot. He saw it in a documentary.
• Jet interrupting Faye and Mel's tender moment.
  Jet: What the fuck?!
  Faye: Oh my god. Do you knock?
  Jet: This is the ENGINE ROOM!
• Everyone telling Faye that the Railgun she bought is a scam. It ends up being what saves Spike.

Session #7: Galileo Hustle

• After Whitney fixes his post-Londes migraine, Spike gushes about how much he loves "mommies" and Jet is disgusted by what he thinks is a fetish.
  • Doubly hilarious since John Cho's character in American Pie is credited for popularizing the term "MILF".
• Whitney tells the Mink that "you want me...you have to go through my friends first."
  Spike: What?!
  Jet: The hell he does!
  Faye: (making throat-cutting motion) Fuck that!
• Jet and Spike take Whitney's Tracking Device diamond ring to lure the Iron Mink away from her. While stuck on a broken-down bus, they start bickering Like an Old Married Couple and an old woman tells them what a cute couple they make.
• Jet watches his daughter's dance recital remotely, even imitating one of her dances, while Spike fights the Mink's men in the background. When Jet waves to his daughter the owner of the store he's in thinks Jet is waving at him and awkwardly waves back.
  • It eventually ends when Spike hurls a mook through the window next to Jet, causing Jet to have to hurriedly end the call. Once it's all said and done, Spike and Jet just talk nonchalantly about the recital.
• Faye's reaction to finding a VHS tape in her Identikit. "What the fuck are you?"
• The Iron Mink is about to kill Faye and Whitney until Whitney says "saddle stitch", a safe word. Faye realizes that the entire plot of the episode has been an elaborate kink roleplay between Whitney and Iron Mink. The two then start making out in front of her and she awkwardly backs out of frame.
  • The Iron Mink kills his bodyguard for overhearing the safe word. Whitney points out that they could have just come up with another one.
  • Immediately afterward, Whitney (Faye's con-artist fake mother) watches Faye giving her the middle finger as she is stealing Whitney's ship and escapes. "That's my girl."

Session #8: Sad Clown A-Go-Go

• Pierrot threatens to kill the crew. Faye's takeaway?
  Faye: The dog plays movies from his eyes!
• Jet not only comes up with an elaborate plan to defeat Mad Pierrot, he creates a rhyming poem that the whole crew has to recite to help memorize it.
  • When Faye questions the necessity of poison gas in the plan, Jet says he bought a canister years ago and it's just been sitting on the shelf, so now that he has an excuse to use it, he's going to, dammit.

Session #9: Blue Crow Waltz

• Fearless' shock that Vicious enjoys letting women shave his balls with a straight razor.

Meta

• Someone put the Seinfeld theme and a laugh track over the diner scene from "Callisto Soul" and it works disturbingly well.