What's all the hubbub...bub?

So what do you do when you go home for Christmas vacation and the whole first week you are there, everyone is at work, school, or is simply too cool to hang out with you? Well, there's a lot of things, yea even many constructive things, that one could do. I chose the Cowboy Bebop route.

Cowboy Bebop is one of the more successful crossover anime successes in recent memory. It got a lot of play on Cartoon Network's anime section of Adult Swim and people seemed drawn to the high octane jazzy action. So I heard a lot about it, saw a snippet here and there, and decided to order the import.

The way I'd describe the show might not be perfect, but I think it's a nice departure point. I think of the series as the life Han Solo would have led if he didn't cross paths with Luke and Obi-Wan that fateful day in Mos Eisley. Our main character and his rag tag group of semi-loyal companions travel around the galaxy pursuing bounties, avoiding the local crime lords, picking up other outcasts, scraping (or scrapping, both are correct) their way out of tight situations, and, in general, living life in the frontier of space. The idea of a group of loners depending on their wits and each other to make their way through the untamed expanses of space brings to mind the life of a cowboy in the 1800s (in the Wild Bill sense of course).

I think this basic model is a strong way to tell a story. First, it gives writers an infinite number of possible stories to work with. The story isn't locked into any one particular story arc. Second, it allows for interesting character exploration. The archetypes of our heroes are easy enough to understand without much backstory. That means as the series progresses their characterizations can be explored in both future events and past events. This double sided character development works very well in the visual medium. Lastly, I think this open model of story telling allows for an organic progression through a variety of scenarios. Each episode doesn't need to propel forward. There are chances for pauses, reflections. Certain episodes can be considered a break for air during a long run. This is a luxury that can't really happen in tightly scripted series(es?).

Because of these things, I will say that it is a solid series, but I really wonder if it deserves ALL the acclaim it has received. The more I think about, the more I say that it comes close. It created a well defined and fleshed out world, had characters that managed to be endearing on a certain level, and told stories that were inventive and well thought out. With those three things in place, it's hard to go wrong, but still, I'm reluctant to call it "great". I think that it suffered from overhype in my own mind. I was expecting something more than what I got. Y'know, kind of like Star Wars eps. 1-3. So here is what I think could have pushed the show from SW1-3 good, to SW4-6 great.

The show needed to be longer both in episode length and run. I'm pretty sure that's not very realistic given the crazy animation requirements for even 30 minute shows, but the stories they tell could be so much better given some extra time to sleuth around and track down their bounties. Give the show an hour a pop and it would improve 100%. The run of the show was the standard 1 season ~25 episodes. In those episodes they tried to do 3 things. 1) Establish all the characters, 2) Tell interesting stand alone stories, and 3) Have a longer mythology arc over the entire series. All important show types, but to do all three effectively in 25 eps? You're pushing your luck.

As show models, think about X-Files and Star Trek: The Next Generation. I use those because I feel pretty familiar. There are probably better examples of what I'm talking about. In each of those shows you get only 2 of those 3 show types mentioned above. The X-Files worked well in stand alone episodes and had a definite mythology arc over multiple seasons. They didn't really work much with specific character episodes because the characters, though well developed, didn't have and didn't need much mystery about them. Scully season 1 and Scully season 6 weren't that different. In fact, it is the character's sameness that allowed for the logic of all the episodes, and is another reason the last seasons went downhill in a hurry. Star Trek TNG didn't really do mythology. An episode here and an episode there would reference earlier eps, but not to the degree we got in the X-Files. What Star Trek had was specific character episodes. We'd get a Data episode, or a Picard episode, and even a Worf episode every once in a while. These went a long way in deepening what could be done with each specific character. Think about Data. Data season 1 wasn't very interesting at all. It was through exploring his character that we were able to have the climax of the entire series (let's hope the films are done) be based around CPT Picard and him. I know I wouldn't have picked him as the second most pivotal character of the series. When characters have a history the audience cares more and you can write more interesting, character driven, stories.

So there you have 2 hour long shows doing only 2 out 3 story types over the course of 5+ seasons. Cowboy Bebop tried to do all three in half an hour shows over one season. They boldly went a little bit too ambitious if you ask me. But on the other hand, better to dare than to regret.

Well, in some things anyway.