One of the most endearing qualities I find in Cowboy Bebop is its ability to tell a balanced tale between the sad and the funny. While the underlying syndicate plot is definitively sinister and tragic, the show tells an equally good story in the comedic episodes, such as Toys in the Attic, Cowboy Funk, and Mushroom Samba.
Speak Like a Child is a classic Cowboy Bebop session in that it embodies both the humour and the tragedy that make it such a memorable series. As a brief diversion from the usual analytical essays, I want to spend some time to pay homage to this session, with particular attention on the visuals and motifs.
The session opens with a horseracing scene laced with a fishing scene; Faye is gambling at the racetrack again and Spike is trying his hand at fishing. You can argue that there is nothing particularly notable about this opening sequence-- except, of course, that visually it is beautifully executed and thematically it stays true to a running gag in the series.
The gag here being that the Bebop crew, no matter how hard they try, never seems to get any real gains from their bounty hunts. Without fail, all the large bounties somehow will somehow slip through their fingers, leaving our (literally) poor heroes with nothing but poorer bank account or, at best, some random small fry. And even when the crew does get onto something good, they lose it immediately either by force or by their own will. Consider the session Honky Tonk Women, where we meet Faye for the first time. The minute Spike and Jet get their hands on the data chip, they find that it is effectively no longer useful to redeem a bounty and just decide to gamble the chip away. In Bohemian Rhapsody, they do manage to locate the Chessmaster Hex but Jet so generously decides to pass on the chance to get money from their find in the end. The habit of pouncing onto something only to end up with nothing extends to their personal life too; in My Funny Valentine, Faye thinks she has found her love in the form of bounty Whitney only to discover that he is a scam artist. Closer to the main story, Spike also finds Julia then promptly loses her in a shootout with the syndicate. Will the cosmic forces ever give the Bebop crew a break? Well, if that turn of luck is coming, it’s certainly not happening in Speak Like a Child. Even before we see the session title, Faye and Spike lose their bet and fish respectively.
Visually, what is striking in this opening sequence is the subtlety with which this gag is conveyed—we never see Spike in the same frame as the escaping fish and we never see Faye in the same frame with the horses either. Instead, what we’re treated to is an implicit telling of their losses—we hear the sound of something splashing into the sea and see a fistful of horseracing tickets being thrust into the air. The downward motion of the falling fish and the upward motion of the tickets provide a beautiful contrast against each other, giving this fairly tame opening sequence an extra visual kick.
This sequence also packs a punch because, even before we see the session title, we are greeted with two recurring elements of the series: gambling and fishing. I’ll discuss both in greater detail in an upcoming essay. Coming back to this opening sequence, note also the uncanny use of classical music for a horseracing and fishing scene—the juxtaposition is unorthodox yet it works in its own way.
Finally, we get to the first proper scene of the session, where we see the Bebop crew having a bit of down time in between bounty hunts. This little slice-of-life scene sheds some insight into the nature of each character. Jet is hanging the laundry while telling Spike and Ed a fable; this is not unlike a mother telling stories to her children while carrying about with domestic duties and simply underscores Jet as the maternal figure onboard the Bebop. Consider also the other instances in which we catch him playing mother on the ship-- the very first time we meet Jet he’s wearing an apron cooking (beefless!) Beef and Bell Peppers for dinner; throughout the series we’ve also seen him sewing torn clothes, tending to plants, or repairing ships that the others have wrecked. So if there is a maternal figure onboard the Bebop, the honor would surely go to the man in the pink shirt with green fingers. On a side note, I always find a wry sense of irony in the fact that the buffest-looking person on the Bebop is the one that so prominently plays the mother role. Of course, this is Cowboy Bebop, a show that practically douses its stories with irony, so in retrospect this aspect of Jet is perfectly in line with the series’ mentality.
Meanwhile, Spike is...
WORK IN PROGRESS. MORE TO COME!
