---
title: Cowboy Bebop (2021)
type: Television
date: 2022-01-01
rating: 4
genre:
  - Science Fiction
year: 2021
status: Finished
image: cowboy-bebop-2021.jpg
tags:
  - television
colorSortKey: [0, 22, 0]
---
 This was neither as bad as I thought it could be nor as good as I hoped it might be. The vast majority of the blame I think has to go towards the scriptwriting, which has a Joss Whedon-esque self-referentiality to it that completely undermines the philosophy of the original and, more than that, _is just bad on its own merits_. ("Welcome to the ouch, motherfuckers" should not get past the writer's room.) The most interesting swing-and-miss of the show was the decision to dedicate a huge amount of time and energy towards Vicious and Julia. The anime's depiction of them — scant — works because we don't _need_ to know that much about them. They're caricatures whose nuances we can paint in on our own. By the time the season wrapped up, I actually enjoyed some of the shades we got — the flashback episode was perhaps my favorite in the show, and ironically it's the one where they weren't forced to hit the same plot beats of the original — and then the characterization of the finale is tired, a hook for a second season.

I am not sad that this show didn't get renewed: it didn't deserve it. At the same time, I don't regret watching it: I groaned and sighed a lot, but it was fun. (And the acting I thought was really well done; the core three cannot be m