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AndCowboy Bebopcaptures the lonely precarity of the 2020 gig economy like nothing else Ive watched.
Shootouts, hand-to-hand combat, space dogfights, and hilarity ensue.
And, in (pretty much) every episode, they dont get paid.
Sometimes this is because the person the crew is trying to capture is killed by some other rival.
Sometimes they just get away.
Sometimes the government refuses to pay on a technicality.
Which is, of course, absurd.
But not thatmuch more absurd than our current, hellish economic structure.
Getting paid is one of the eternal Sisyphean tasks of a freelancers existence, andBebopgets that.
InCowboy Bebop,there is never enough money, and it never sticks around for long.
Once again, the Bebop crew is shit out of luck.
In addition to financial precarity, the show captures a profound sense of loneliness.
Its crime was carving massive, animal-shaped earthworks onto Earths surface.
It was lonely, so it drew some friends, Spike observes.
These visuals land differently during the COVID-19 pandemic social distancing has nothing on the isolation of deep space.
The thing that moved me the most on this rewatch, though, was the sense of stillness.
But its also full of people sitting around.
The characters wait alot: for a new bounty to be announced, for money to come through.
They paint their nails and trim their bonsai trees and smoke endless cigarettes and get on each others nerves.
Rarely does an action show pay so much attention to listlessness or capture it with such care.
The genius ofCowboy Bebopin 2020 is how it manages to be both escapist Space!
That sounds like it should be depressing.
And to some extent, it is.
The world is an uncaring place and none of us are getting paid enough to deal with it.
Theres something comforting about television that understands this.
Cowboy Bebopisstreaming on Hulu.
