In the seventh session of Cowboy Bebop, Spike and Faye must rely on a metal-loving trucker to track down a bounty. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Cowboy Bebop.
OH MY GOD, I LOVE VICTORIA TERPSICHORE SO MUCH. Can she please become a regular? She probably won’t, but h e l p. She has a cat named Zeroes. She loves metal. WHO SANG THAT OPENING SONG? It sounded like Iron Maiden, one of my favorite metal bands. Oh my god, I just want to sit with her and talk about the NWoBHM and early thrash metal and how great dual harmonized guitars are because she would totally understand me.
It’s great that music plays such a huge part in this show because music is my everything. I mean, my god, that’s one of the few things I am prepared for. While I feel like I’ve missed out on a ton of good books, and I’ve seen like ten shows ever, music is something I’m much more proficient and knowledgable about. In this episode, it’s used to give us an idea what the culture is for truckers in outer space. THERE ARE TRUCKERS IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM. And V.T. traveled to Venus and back in three days. And she has a cat named Zeroes and god I loved this episode so much.
While Spike does get a small sum of money at the end of “Heavy Metal Queen,” once again the Bebop team comes home empty-handed. Yet this particularly episode left me feeling great. The bounty, some trafficker named Decker (who suspiciously looked exactly like Woody Allen), is killed after destroying Faye’s ship, Spike appears to make a new friend, and Ein gets bean sprouts for dinner. Dude, I love bean sprouts. But that’s not the point. The point is: Victoria Terpsischore.
Honestly, this was largely a one-off episode to introduce us to the cargo hauler community in one of the series’ better sequences. We briefly meet a diverse group of guys who all spend hours in space transporting cargo across vast expanses. Love Machine. Spider Mike. Sneaky Snake. I loved the tiny shrines each trucker had built of the lives they left behind. I loved the language. I love that people could know of one another without ever meeting, that a community could spring up around a profession like it does here.
But mostly, I enjoyed the way the writers humanized V.T. She comes in for a drink after a long haul. She’s not rude for the sake of it, and she looks out for those around her. She isn’t flawless, but she cares. She’s rather harsh to Spike at first once she discovers he is a bounty hunter. That’s why it’s so ironic when she unknowingly turns into one herself, chasing after a bounty because Decker damaged a friend’s cargo. She doesn’t even realize it because she so concerned about setting things right.
I worried that she’d die or sacrifice herself by the end of this episode, but in hindsight, that’s not the sort of story that fits who she is. She warmed up to Spike because Spike demonstrated that he could be trusted. He showed up to help her, and then he and Faye risked their lives to blast V.T. out of that asteroid mine. While I’m sure she’ll always be weary of bounty hunters, at least she knows that Faye and Spike were there for her when she needed them.
Y’all, I just want her to come back so badly. ZEROES AND EIN COULD BE FRIENDS. Could you even imagine how great that would be?
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