Blue Rose: a Cowboy Bebop Fansite

This is one of the funnier (if not the funniest) sessions in the entire series. While its focus is humor and character development of Ed and Ein, it does contain a little foreshadowing and glimpses into the character's heads.

Faye will eat anything. If this is not clear after she eats dog food, they make it clear time and time again. This time, she at the rations that the crew was saving for "the last of the last resorts." When Faye gets sick, Spike seems only concerned about himself, saying he was glad he hadn't ate it. Jet seemed pleased that Faye did get sick. To me, I think Jet cares about Faye a little bit more than Spike does. Not that being glad someone is sick is a big sign of concern, but it starts to establish that Jet actually cares about Faye. The bond between them (weather you think its romantic or friendly) is important since they are left alone together at the end of the series.

Ed took her job of getting them food seriously. She went out with Ein in search of food, but found trouble. I still find it hilarious that Ed can't wear socks! These scenes are great, and I laugh no matter how many times I see them. Ed gets some bad mushrooms from Domino on accident. When Ein ate one and started hopping around, she should have known they were bad, but this is an eccentric thirteen-year-old genius we are talking about here. So she did what any good scientist would do: experiment by testing...on the Bebop crew.

The way the characters take the mushroom reveals much about their personalities. Faye looks around her to make sure no one is watching and eats the mushroom. All she was concerned about was not getting caught, which is how she usually behaves. Jet, on the other hand, rationalizes. He thinks through it logically, making up the excuse that if it isn't real, no one is going to miss it. Jet thinks before he acts. Spike is just smooth. No one would have noticed him take that mushroom if they hadn't been watching closely. I love that man!

The hallucinations, though comical, still relate to the whole series, especially in giving the audience clues into Spike's mentality. Yes, he is drugged up on the mushroom, but he dreams about walking a staircase that seems to never end. It is the stairway to heaven, and besides the obvious reference to the Led Zeppelin song, internally Spike wants to make it to heaven (or to the end of his painful existence), but feels that the end is never in sight. The frog that he saw is similar to the ones that appear in fairy tales and give a person a riddle to answer before they let them through. This frog warned Spike where he was headed, but really served no purpose except to be obnoxious. Spike should have squashed the thing, if you ask me.

Faye hallucinates about swimming with fish. When she wakes up, there is toilet paper in her mouth, reinforcing that she will eat anything. She was probably trying to eat one of the imaginary fish (silly girl). Jet talks to his bonsai plants, and wakes up with lipstick on his mouth and face. I do not even want to know what he was doing!

When Ed goes out a second time to look for food, she catches Domino and has a chance to get the bounty on him. He offers her mushrooms, and she takes them. I found myself wondering why she took the mushrooms instead of the bounty, but when I viewed the session again it made sense. Ed was supposed to get food for them, not a bounty. When she saw him on TV, she told Ein that they could bring him in, collect the bounty, and buy food. So you see, she was only playing her part in the crew. Although they got quite sick of shitake mushrooms...

The very end of the session proclaims, "Life is just a dream." This statement clicks into place at the end of the series when Spike says he feels like he's been living life as in a dream for the past three years. Of course for now, the reference is in the more obvious context of drugs. But this is a hint of foreshadowing, for those who look close enough.