Cowboy Bebop: "The Real Folk Blues"

(This is the 13th installment of my biweekly recaps of Cowboy Bebop, the TV Tokyo animated series that ran from 1998 to 1999 to cult fascination and critical acclaim. I’ve never seen it! These recaps are only available to paid subscribers.)

• “The Real Folk Blues (Part 1)” (originally aired April 17, 1999 [Wowow], and November 19, 2001 [Adult Swim])
• “The Real Folk Blues (Part 2)” (originally aired April 24, 1999 [Wowow] and November 26, 2002 [Adult Swim])

‎As Spike Spiegel staggered down a completely impractical (but deeply cool-looking) staircase, his legs finally giving way beneath him, so he collapsed, I had one thought: Haven't I seen this before?

To be sure, there are plenty of stories — particularly Westerns and noirs, two genres Cowboy Bebop is indebted to — that end with the highly skilled but even more self-destructive hero sacrificing themselves to save the day. Cowboy Bebop's ending is in keeping with that trope, right down to Spike's sacrifice seeming to stem more from personal vengeance than something more forthrightly heroic. Stopping Vicious does protect the solar system and Spike's friends on some level, but let's be honest: Spike wants Vicious dead because of what Vicious has done to Spike.

But I didn't have the sense I'd seen this before because the ending is a successful adaptation of a long-standing trope. No, I had the sense because seemingly half the conclusions of pulpy stories since Bebop ended in 1999 have offered their own spins on its conclusion. For example, the series finale of Breaking Bad chooses different camera angles to show Walter White's final few steps, but the rhythms of both scenes are very similar. And the conclusion of Blade Runner 2049 is very nearly a shot-for-shot remake. I am not saying in any way that these other stories ripped Bebop off. Rather, I'm suggesting that the specific way Bebop handles this trope seeped into the creative groundwater and popped up all over the place.

It's easy to see why! The final moments of Cowboy Bebop are beautifully handled on both a visual and a storytelling level. Spike's last walk down that staircase perfectly culminates his journey as a character, but it's also gorgeous to look at. The muted colors that are just subdued enough to allow Spike's similarly muted palette to pop, the dark and brooding background, the ultra-wide shot that conveys a sense of scale, and even the blocking of the various figures within the scene all contribute to a visual that sticks around in the brain long after you've finished watching the show. Even if you don't mean to copy Cowboy Bebop, you might do so anyway. It sticks in your subconscious's craw.

Even as I've come to love Bebop, I wasn't expecting "The Real Folk Blues" to work for me as much as it did. Of the central four characters, Spike's journey felt the most straightforward and tropey to me. It was well done, but the other characters all got to have journeys I found more immediately surprising. Spike's long history with the Red Dragon Syndicate, Vicious, and Julia never grabbed hold of me in a similar fashion to, say, Faye's search for her missing past. (Then again, it would be hard for any storyline to grab me as much as that one did.) And when you consider how well "Hard Luck Woman" brings both Ed and Faye to a graceful endpoint and how a lack of conclusiveness defines Jet's story, "Folk Blues" seemed like it might be a perfunctory wrap-up for the show's protagonist.

But the episode worked incredibly well for me. "Hard Luck Woman" remains my favorite episode of the series, but "Folk Blues" made a strong case for itself all the same. It accomplishes something many of my favorite series finales do: It offers a sense of conclusion without a sense of completeness.

When "Folk Blues" ends, you more or less understand why the story ends where it does, but you don't get a sense that everything has been tied up with a bow. This story is over; the characters' lives aren't all wrapped up. Even Spike, who is dead, leaves behind friendships with Jet and Faye that will never be wholly resolved. Spike will always be the guy who left both of them in the name of his need to get revenge.

‎No moment in the finale expresses this better than Faye, frustrated at Spike's bullheaded desire to track down and kill Vicious, firing a gun into the air just over his head. She can't bring herself to stop him by, say, firing at his leg, but she also can't just avoid shooting in his general direction. Her motivations for doing this — beyond the obvious desire to keep Spike from leaving — are wonderfully mysterious. Did she think the two of them were going to heal together? Does she see him as a core part of her newfound chosen family? Is she in love with him? All the above are true, and no one choice is even part of the answer. Faye herself probably doesn't entirely know why she does what she does. The moment overwhelms her.

I want to talk more about the series as a whole, but I would be remiss if I didn't at least mention that the action sequences in this final two-parter are perhaps the best in the show's run. In particular, Spike's slow progress toward Vicious and his ultimate battle with his nemesis are brilliantly staged and incredibly thrilling. Top-notch work all around.

Viewed through a lens steeped in the post-Sopranos model of serialized television, elements of "Folk Blues" feel slightly rushed. On a modern series, Vicious's campaign to take over the Red Dragon Syndicate likely would have played out as a B-story in several episodes rather than being confined to Spike-centric episodes. Similarly, the relationship between Julia and Spike would have been given more room throughout the season. As it is, the show asks us to take its word regarding the idea that she was so important to him that he essentially blew up his life when everything imploded.

And if I have a complaint about the finale, it likely stems from that modern expectation that I am putting onto a series made in a very different style of episodic storytelling. "Folk Blues" strains itself to pull in many elements from prior episodes to offer a sense of completeness. But I'm not sure that I needed to see Laughing Bull again, for example, especially when his only real contribution to the narrative is to foreshadow that Spike will die, something the rest of the episode all but told us anyway. The choice seems designed to make viewers feel as though they have come to the end of a very long and complicated journey, but the episode feels that way enough already that it doesn't need the added heft. It's like the show trying to have its episodic storytelling cake, then a slice of serialized storytelling cake on top of it, and the whole combination ends up being a little much.

But you know what? The second I was done watching this finale, I turned on Netflix's live-action adaptation of the show from 2021, which really does thread Vicious and Julia throughout the action, and what I watched of it further convinced me that the original Bebop's embrace of almost purely episodic storytelling is the right call for this kind of show. The lives of these characters are many smaller stories that add up to one big one.

As I suggested the last time we met, the crew on a space opera TV show is generally a facsimile of a chosen family. Sure, they're all here because they work together, but the isolated location creates bonds that more resemble familial ones than those among co-workers. And if you think about the stories told by families (biological or chosen) or tight friend groups, they have a more episodic quality. This happened, and another time, this happened, oh, and remember the time this happened?

Serialization is well and good, but it creates a burden of expectations, of an ending that will put a rubber stamp on the characters and their connection. It is precisely the wrong choice for a story about a family because the idea of a family is that you're bound to them on some level for as long as you're alive. By threading Spike's enmity with Vicious throughout its run, Netflix's Bebop subtly sets that storyline apart as more important than the implicit story of the crew coming together and forming that found family. The show starts from a place of having one hand tied behind its back. Even if you haven't seen the original, you know what the final scene of Netflix's first episode (in which Vicious is introduced) means: Here's the real story.

There are ways to make that work, but I'm not convinced they mesh well with what makes Cowboy Bebop so enjoyable. Spike's death at the end of this series feels like a betrayal. And it sort of is one. Wasn't he forming a new life and a new family with these people? Jet and Faye have given up big things to be part of this crew. Why can't Spike?

The answer, of course, is that if he did, he wouldn't be the series' hero. Where the show itself argues for a better life when freed from the burdens of the past, Spike refuses to take that step. He is trapped in a cycle he can't help but repeat, and even if he proves the winner in the end, it takes his life. There are better ways to live, but there's only one way Spike Spiegel can live. Even if it feels like a betrayal, you have to respect it. He's the man he always was, even in death.

Bang.

‎Other thoughts I thought:

• First, a correction from last time: You can find "Call Me, Call Me" on Spotify. It's just not in the place you'd expect to find it.
• I was genuinely shocked that Spike died, even though everything in the series to this point led to that happening. Some of me didn't want to believe it was possible. (Also, the movie's existence — even though I knew it was set earlier in the series' chronology — threw me off a bit.)
• Many shows would have turned the chance meeting between Faye and Julia into a kind of "Spike's past and present girlfriends collide!" story. Granted, Spike and Faye never got together (bah!), but I still appreciated the show avoiding leaning into this trope even by implication.
• Did I want Spike and Faye to get together? I honestly don't know. They would have made a disaster couple, but in a way that might have helped them each fill in gaps in the other. They either would have broken up three months in or been together forever. I'm not sure there's a middle ground.
• I respect the show's choice not to bring back Ed and Ein, but it's obvious that if Ein had stuck around, Spike wouldn't have died. That dog was a good luck corg.
• If the finale doesn't serve a character particularly well, I'd say Jet ends up trapped in a long series of scenes where he seems to be driven mainly by complaining about Spike's death wish.
• That said, the stories Spike and Jet swap at two crucial moments in the finale make for two of my favorite scenes, so ignore me. I don't know what I'm talking about.
• I have never wanted to cosplay before, but I would absolutely cosplay as Faye if I didn't think I would look very, very ridiculous.
• RIP to the Red Dragon Syndicate triplets, who look like Hayao Miyazaki creations randomly dropped into the slightly more realistic world of Cowboy Bebop.
• The full version of "The Real Folk Blues" slaps.
• I was surprised to learn that this didn't air as a full, one-hour finale when it was shown for the first time in either Japan or the US. That second episode opens with a bare-bones title card, which often indicates that the episode has been pulled out of a longer broadcast for syndication purposes. Even the "next time on" package at the end of part one has big "we threw this together for syndication" vibes.
• I loved Faye seeing the TV show host at the spaceport.
• Favorite episode: "Hard Luck Woman" (r/u: "Speak Like a Child") What can I say? I love Faye Valentine!
• Least favorite episode: I liked all of them, but I guess if I had to pick, I'd probably go with "Wild Horses," which just didn't grab me.
• A friend of mine described this show as having the best score in TV history. I don't know that I disagree, but if you have other nominees, post them in the comments! (I would likely choose Lost, so you know.)
• See you, space cowboy.

Next time: Except... we have one more rodeo ahead of us, pardner! (Sorry.) Cowboy Bebop: The Movie will be our final destination. I'll see you for that on August 8! I'll also likely write about the Netflix series for the free newsletter on August 15. And then we'll move on to something new!