#Cowboy Bebop Season 1 Episode 3 Review: Dog Star Swing

For fans of the original anime, Cowboy Bebop Season 1 Episode 3 probably evoked a cheer of recognition when Ein makes his appearance.

Those unfamiliar with the Pembroke Welsh Corgi datadog are probably still bewildered by the online outpouring of love for what appears to be an incidental character. And a dog at that.

For me, I am fascinated by the idea that, in the future, owning a dog denotes extreme wealth.

There are two primary mission objectives to this narrative, and neither is achieved, which is starting to become par for the course with this team of bounty hunters.

Again, no Faye in the mix, so Jet doesn’t have anyone to give him an alternative option to his headlong, no price too steep, quest to acquire a Walking Sally Doll for his daughter, Kimmie.

The other objective, to catch the dognapper for the massive bounty, is sabotaged by the cops when they put a bullet in Hakim’s head just as he’s admitted he should probably get some help.

Hakim: That’s a good deal. You guys get some kale and I go away for the piece of shit that I am.

Spike: We gotta do something about your self-esteem, Hakim.

Hakim: Yeah, I know.

Jet’s series of mishaps with the Walking Sally Doll, once he gets one from the impressively tattooed and pierced Maori toy dealer, would be devastating if it wasn’t so hilarious.

And, seriously, who makes a black market doll deal outside the two seediest brothels on Mars?

Woven in subtly to the cowboy banter is the discussion on how one deals with a brother who betrays you.

Spike poses it as a non-hypothetical to Jet in the context of Chalmers, who was once a fellow officer but is now seeing Jet’s ex-wife and raising his daughter.

Chalmers will be there. With his smiley fucking face. Did I ever tell you that about him? He’s always smiling. You first meet the guy and think he’s had a stroke or something. Then you realize he’s just one happy asshole.

Jet

Chalmers doesn’t recommend himself after his run-in with Jet on Cowboy Bebop Season 1 Episode 1 at the Europa police station. He doesn’t improve that impression when he leads the cops in to kill Hakim and collect the stolen dogs.

Spike: You never answered my question.

Jet: Whether I’d put a bullet in him? No. That’d be too quick and painless for that asshole. If I could get away with it, I’d pull Chalmers into a dark alley and put my metal fist right through his smiley fucking face. Make him go through the rest of his miserable life with a face that matches his miserable sense of brotherhood. But I’m not bitter.

But Spike’s thinking about Vicious while talking it out about Chalmers.

So when he has Vicious pinned down, and in his sniper sights, one has to wonder if he stays the killing shot out of the remnants of brotherly affection or if he plans to even the score with Vicious in the future in some other way.

Spike’s logic contortions to keep Jet in the dark about his past with The Syndicate get pretty outlandish while he’s trying to stay on-planet so Sushi Food Truck Guy can get back to him.

Spike’s prediction that Jet will have an insurmountable issue with him once being a Syndicate hitman may be accurate. Jet has some pretty strong feelings about things. 

However, they’ve also been partners for three years. Spike’s Hamlet-like procrastination is likely to make things worse when the truth comes out. And all indications are that the truth will out in a loud and proud way.

While the series is living up to its “action-packed” advertising, and the fight scenes have been quite exceptional, I’ve been more entertained with the side characters introduced.

Case in point: Woodcock! (And, again, I want to point out I think names do matter.)

Seriously, how much fun was Carmel McGlone having making her lascivious offers and innuendos?

It’s the colorful and dynamic additions like Woodcock that anchor Cowboy Bebop firmly in the realm of the fantastic. Everything about this anime adaptation fights the inclination to recreate our world in the future. Instead, it makes it MORE.

More crazy. More intense. More brutal. More passionate.

Cowboy Bebop is not only a space Western, it’s a space Western MELODRAMA, and it revels in that identity.

This is even more apparent with Julia’s visit to Ana’s club.

There’s always a choice. That’s why you came. I haven’t survived on this sweet, spinning sphere by chance. I did it by taking power. You have the power. You control your destiny.

Ana

A scene between a battered wife and a woman of means would IRL involve a reasonable plan of action, counseling, a safe house, maybe even the calling in of some favor to remove Vicious.

But The Syndicate is such a cartoonishly impossible opposing force in this world, neither of them even considers escape. At least, not yet.

I predict that whatever Julia’s brewing up in her head is guaranteed to be anything but reasonable.

Jet and Spike might be the main characters here, but as each episode rolls out, we discover that remarkably unique and powerful female characters surround them.

Greta the Dominatrix is perhaps the most amusing one turned out here. Her wholehearted devotion to her calling is quite admirable, and she turns out to be an excellent source of information.

Greta: Are you a cheap bastard?

Spike: Not by choice, mistress.

(By the way, I kind of get the reference to “Betty’s Bottom,” but what exactly do they mean by “Betty’s Boop”? Hm, maybe I don’t want to know.)

Returning to Jet’s mission goal, when he fails monumentally in securing a giftable Walking Sally Doll, he pivots and thinks he’ll give Kimmie a dog instead. And while that didn’t work out either, her love for Ein is so touching, he’s willing to keep an illegal pet with him on The Bebop just so Kimmie can visit with it.

There’s a charm in Jet’s preoccupation with being a good dad from a distance. It’s nice to know, in a world dominated by killers, crime, and corruption, there is at least one dad out there who simply wants to make his little girl smile.

Were you surprised by Vicious’s way of shutting down his Red Eye operations… temporarily?

Are you missing Faye as much as I am? Hit our comments with how you think she’ll return!

Diana Keng is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow her on Twitter.