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| feel the swoon, faye |
"Honky Tonk Women." Or just "woman." As much as I love overanalyzing this show, it's hard to tell where the translation issues end and the attention to detail begins. The English dub, which apparently holds more canonical weight as I mentioned before, called it "Woman" in last episode's preview. Was naming the episode "Women" a conscious choice to make it sound more tantalizing, while the translation to "Woman" strove for accuracy? For ease of mind, I'll speculate no further on translation issues. I'll continue to watch each episode at least once with the subtitles, but I'll give the English dub the benefit of the doubt for any discrepancies. However, for categorical purposes I'll still call the episode "Honky Tonk Women." Speaking of episode titles, I did finally notice that they all have a musical reference so far: "Asteroid Blues," "Stray Dog Strut," and "Honky Tonk Women." I haven't looked at the other episode titles yet, so we'll see if the trend continues.
Once again, last episode's preview set the mood perfectly, with Faye's mysterious yet conniving aura signaling a return to the noirish style of "Asteroid Blues." "Stray Dog Strut" may have been an outlier, though the show doesn't seem to want to be pigeon-holed into any particular genre. I wonder if Cowboy Bebop is like other sci-fi shows such as The X-Files or Buffy in that they generally have two kinds of episodes: "monster of the week" episodes having a more procedural story with little to no character development, and more "lore-heavy" episodes typically having more serious content with plotlines spanning into future episodes. Cowboy Bebop has been procedural for the most part, but there have been a few potential overarching plot points. Three episodes isn't much to go on, but next episode seems like another "bounty of the week" if the preview is any indication... but more on that later.
Teaser - right off the bat we find ourselves in the same Martian city as last episode. The establishing shot is the same, only the time of day has changed. The location may have been a budgetary constraint for the animators. The shopkeeper "Snake Handler" mentioned making "big bucks," but I got no indication of it being a gambling town. Maybe he just made a lucky guess about her future plans, who knows. Once again, I'm hung up over the most unimportant details, so let's talk about how goddamn cool Faye is. The smoking, the strut, the shades... and her ears poking out from her hair is the icing on the cake for me personally... Where was I? Snake Handler. Poor guy's "Herbal Medicine Shop" gets decimated in a huge shootout. Somebody needs to teach these goons how to conserve ammo. Faye's cynical "shoot first" policy doesn't help her escape from no fewer than seven gunmen.
Title card - and holy crap this music is too cool. First thing I'm doing after finishing this project is procuring the soundtrack. Mr. just-enough-mustache-for-twirling Gordon considers Faye to be the embodiment of legendary Wild West hustler Poker Alice. My first thought was "resurrection!?" It could help explain why everyone seems so flippant with the gunplay... but alas, Gordon was apparently being facetious. However, I wouldn't rule out reincarnation with all the mysticism floating around. In any case, he's enamored with her luck, considering she survived that shootout and who knows what else. While he pulls out an ace in the hole, he calls her queen of hearts... they do combine to make 21. Sure enough, "queen makes 21" the next time we see Faye.
"Spiders from Mars" is the name of Gordon's space station casino as well as David Bowie's backing band. I admit I had to look that up, and I'm sure other future musical references will go over my head. Meanwhile, Jet's referencing Goethe and dreams. "Only hands can wash hands. If you want to receive, you have to give." Somehow he interprets this as "go use up your last 5,000 Woolongs in a casino." I don't have a better interpretation, but who am I to question the mystical prophecies of this universe? Undoubtedly, it will come to pass in some fashion (if it hasn't already.) Spike demonstrates a new regurgitative parlor trick which becomes useful later, just like his sleight of hand in "Asteroid Blues." In lieu of any Spike sloth instances, I'm amending the trend to include all seven deadly sins. This time, it's Spike gluttony as he unnecessarily consumes the cigarette and chip. Last episode's hot-headedness could also be Spike wrath. Plus, we get a Jet jest for pointing out the "no smoking" sign! I'll wait til Faye becomes more established before sticking her with a recurring trend.
The dapper pair step out into the lap of luxury, and Jet warns Spike to not go all Rain Man on the games. If Lady Luck is reincarnated in anyone, it's these two. Who else could win 200,000 Woolongs on the slots, or get blackjack after hitting on 19?! At least Spike spreads the love to the three seedy old guys from Tijuana. Walking past a theater, Spike sees a silent film actor saying "Only a true SAMURAI can kill him like this." Anytime there's a show within a show, their stories often run parallel to each other. We'll see if this pops up again.
Spike meets Faye. Faye either has face blindness or assumes Spike is a plastic surgery nut. Spike's WAY more smooth than that twitchy doppelganger. Just look at that face I posted up there! swoooon. Sure enough, Faye cheats him out for all but one chip, but Spike knew she was hustling. He and "Twitchy Bizzaro Spike" get distracted by someone winning 100,000,000 Woolongs at the slots (how is this casino still in business?!) and their chips are switched. Spike is not easily swayed when Faye confronts him, so the chip goes down the gullet. Was that chip laced with Bloody Eye or something? Because Spike takes on like five goons at once. He's just lucky in every way but finances. Even poor Jet has to ditch his entire pot of winnings! I wonder if Faye's zipcraft becomes one of the four "machinery" ships listed in the opening credits, perhaps the Swordfish II? Faye escapes, but not before Jet and Spike hijack her. Twitchy Bizzaro Spike does not escape unfortunately, and pays the price for his unluckiness with four bullets to the head. Luck aside, he also wasn't very smart for not arranging a more neutral place than the villain's lair for the meet.
Oooh, shiny new intermission title card! Just one of the new additions for this episode. Do these professional bounty hunters always chain their precious cargo to the bathroom?! And do they always relent to uncuffing the hand of a known hustler?! Luck's got nothing to do with bounty hunting, guys... While Faye contacts Gordon on her lipstick transmitter, Jet displays his Matrix skills as he determines the chip's contents from a screen filled with 1's and 0's. Spike's unimpressed, so he watches some Big Shot. Looks like I need to change the hosts' names, since I heard "Tex-Mex" get called "Punch." I can only assume "Magic Top" must be "Judy." I'm still confused on how the bounty payments work. Gordon called in the bounty on Faye, but the galactic police collect the fugitives. It's still unclear to me as to who pays the bounty hunters, but something about this system seems corrupt. But if this trend with our heroes never collecting a bounty continues, I may never know the truth.
Faye takes a gamble in assuming she's still valuable to Gordon if she can rat out Spike and Jet. Gordon's lucky they didn't bolt straight for the police. Faye stalls for time with her gypsy speech; who knows if any of it was true. Jet boasts that his prophetic dream's about to come true, but Gordon crashes the fun. As he lays down some microchip lore, Jet reveals he was once with ISSP Special Forces, a "shady" organization according to the subtitles. This is the first real bit of character development for Jet, so I took special notice. Faye raids the fridge, meaning one of two things: it's another instance of gluttony, or playing to the "all gypsies are cheating thieves" trope. I'd prefer the former.
If I were to comment on every little thing I found cool, these posts would get pretty redundant. But I have to say I was grinning ear to ear during the old-fashioned standoff. Spike carefully times the count to 3 so that the rotating equipment blocks the gunshots. There's a reprise of the fighting theme from "Asteroid Blues" as Spike zips through space dodging bullets. His kill count is now up to at least three after he kicks the gunman to his doom. Faye, after taking off with 30 million Woolongs, ups her kill count quite substantially after reversing the polarity of the Enterprise's deflector beam onto Gordon's ship. Maybe they're not "kills," as it was more out of self-defense. Regardless, they once again leave a trail of bodies behind another botched bounty hunt. Oh well, time to pay respects to Gordon by playing one last game on his space station casino. The cycle of corruption continues as someone is heard shouting "Hey, the dealers cheat!" Is the ship flying into the stars supposed to be Faye, who's returned to her hustling ways? Or has a new Poker Alice taken her place? Spike's not worried about his future, as the episode ends with the slothful philosophy: "Easy come, easy go..."
PREDICTIONS: Next episode looks like another "bounty of the week" as I mentioned earlier. So I doubt we meet Edward (Eddie? Ed?) next time. The Bebop has got to break down soon, since Spike even mentions its bad shape in the preview. And I guess we'll finally see another planet besides Mars, since Ganymede is a moon of Jupiter. Other than that, I think making any more predictions for this insane-looking episode would be futile.
RATING: "Honky Tonk Women" was just plain cool. I am truly and honestly a fan of this show by now, if that hasn't already been made clear. Its universe, while often baffling and surreal in its logic, is absolutely captivating. The cinematography and music are consistently outstanding, while the translation and other Japan-isms will take some getting used to on my part. I think I prefer "Asteroid Blues" slightly, since Gordon wasn't much more than your standard Bond villain. Jet's microchip explanation dragged on kind of long too. Unless it shows up again, I don't really care what the MacGuffin does. Everything else was great! So "Honky Tonk Women" gets 9 stealthily-hidden playing cards out of 10.
Until next time, "AWWOOOOO, the wilds are calling me!"
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| swoonswoonswoon |
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