1x06 Ganymede Elegy

[8.2/10] I loved this one. It had a real Casablanca vibe to it. The sense of an old romance gone awry, duty conflicting with moving on, and old grudges being reckoned with on the edge of criminality and nobility, really elevates this one.

It doesn’t hurt that the episode focuses on Jet, who’s pretty easily my favorite character on the show. Delving into his history a bit is fascinating. We learn he was a cop. We learn he had a de facto wife. We learn that the dissolution of their relationship is what spurred him to leave law enforcement for bounty-hunting. These events humanize him, explain him, and deepen him. Giving him time to spill his guts a little, be stoic and dignified but clearly wounded, is powerful.

Maybe my favorite scene in the whole show is him sitting in Elisa’s bar, being vulnerable but frank about how his life was turned upside down when he left, about feeling numbed by the loss, about wanting to know why. You can feel this sense of lost love, even as the wound has scabbed over in the intervening years. Somehow, that only gives the small scale tragedy of it more force. Honestly if it had only been Jet nursing old wounds with the symbol of the pocket watch, reflecting on how time had stood still for him, but kept moving for Elisa, this would still have made for a great vignette.

But then Cowboy Bebop kicks it up a notch. There is, again, something very Casablanca-esque about the way Jet’s rough-and-tumble job leaves him forced to consider dropping the hammer on his ex’s new boyfriend. In this instance, the boyfriend is wanted for murder, but acted in self-defense when loan sharks were roughing up Elisa. He’s a noble man caught up in a bad situation, but Jet also has a bounty to collect.

In terms of sheer artistry, in addition to the sumptuous noir-esque framings, the chase between Jet and Spike on the one hand, and Eisa and Rhint on the other, has plenty of excitement and expressive compositions to follow. But I more appreciate the characterization of Jet as a “black dog” who can't let go once he sinks his teeth into something. The double-meaning there is straightforward. He is a bounty hunter, devoted to catching his quarry. But he also remains stuck on Elisa, and hasn’t been able to let her go in his heart either.

And yet, when he catches her, she tells him exactly why she left -- because he was too controlling, always having to be right, always pushing her in one direction or another. She wanted to break free of that and live her own life. It’s sad, but you can see it. You can see Jet’s desire to have things done a certain way (as frustrated by the pack of “weirdos” he travels with). And you can see how someone might care for him, but need the autonomy apart from it.

Whatever the explanation, Jet has its answer. He’s able to make peace with things, catch Rhent while seeing that he won’t suffer for long on account of his acting in self-defense, and let Elisa know that her time waiting for him will pass quicker than she thinks. He’s able to see the good in his erstwhile romantic rival, and understand why someone he loved left him. It’s not easy, but there is great catharsis in him moving past it as she has, being able to throw that pocketwatch, a symbol of his lost love, into the same waters through which he was chasing her.

Cowboy Bebop isn’t often so lyrical or poetic as this. But when it is, it produces my favorite stories in the series, the kind that make me want to keep going with it.