One Good Point (Show) - Cowboy Bebop (Netflix)

This show started off with such tremendous promise. I'd seen a few episodes of the original anime series, and enjoyed it well enough, but not so much that it kept me engaged beyond those first few episodes. There's something about anime that seems to get in the way of my enjoyment, something about the visuals maybe. Regardless, the show didn't resonate with me.

However, somewhere in the first fifteen minutes of the live-action version of the show, I found myself completely enthralled with the whole... everything. John Cho as Spike Spiegel was great, equal parts brutal and pithy, and the explosive violence, reckless gunplay, and the intermittent clever quips made for a fun, outer space, wild west experience. Then when Daniella Pineda gets brought on board as Faye Valentine, I was riveted. The characters felt fun, dynamic, and unpredictable.

And then the show got wrapped up in trying to tell a story, and for me, it all fell apart.

The entire storyline involving Spike's history with organized crime just fell completely flat, and while there are a lot of reasons, I think one in particular is that that story didn't work in a ridiculous world. The story was too serious, too unsuited for this unserious world. We're talking about a world that smacks of Borderlands, with its over-the-top violence and outlandish characters. The brutal and utterly humorless tone of the Syndicate feels inappropriate for the show, and it's almost as if there are two completely different shows being made here at the same time.

The most prime example of that disjointed feeling is the character Vicious. We're supposed to hate him for his cruelty, and while he is cruel, and I do hate him, the two aren't really linked. The character is so uninterestingly written that it seems like the actor felt like he had to push the bombast to eleven, and then up, and up, and up again. But when you have a poorly written character and you crank them up, all you get is something even worse. It's like when I find a low-quality song on YouTube. I think that turning it up will make it sound better in my headphones, but all it does is amplify the flaws. Vicious is an incredibly flawed character, and ramping up the volume is just going to give you a headache.

I understand why the show wasn't renewed. I wouldn't have renewed it, not in its current form, with its existing storylines or the full cast. But there was a ton of potential here to do something fun and kooky and action-packed. I'm hearing that the Borderlands movie is a train wreck, so maybe this is just a really hard balance to nail. But somebody's gotta be able to do it. I mean Guardians of the Galaxy happened, right?

If you want to watch the Netflix Cowboy Bebop series, this is gonna blow your mind, but your best bet is to search for it on Netflix! But you can click here just to make sure.

For posterity, you can also click here to see where you might be able to watch the original Cowboy Bebop anime series as well!