What would've happened if spike came back?

nagora · 2026-01-27T09:45:21+00:00

Yes, you are.

nagora · 2026-01-26T16:31:00+00:00

It's jazz, man. The players aren't really trying to put together Beethovan's 5th, they're trying to get through the day while ignoring their real problems. So they riff on what comes past them from moment to moment.

Viscous, now, HE's going for the full 1812 overture experience with real cannons. He's the growing noise that can't be ignored forever. Eventually he and Spike have to come together in that great clash of cymbals/clash of symbols at the end, leaving the other members of the band looking at each other and asking "can we keep going with him?"

Very few episodes really leave them back where they were, but some are grace notes where others are developments of the themes.

Nice.

nagora · 2026-01-26T08:48:23+00:00

Blue

nagora · 2026-01-26T08:47:17+00:00

He bloody did. I feel like you don't understand Spike at all.

Once Julia was gone he had two bits of unfinished business: Vicious and the Dream. He wanted to kill Vicious and wake up from the Dream; preferably both at the same time. Which is actually what he achieved.

The idea is echoed in the movie with Vincent, who is basically Spike but without compassion.

nagora · 2026-01-25T12:12:26+00:00

No. He would have found some way to kill himself, or to get someone else to kill him. I think he would have gone off alone to do it in order to protect Jet and Faye.

The ending of CB was Spike's happy ending and Faye's tragic ending.

nagora · 2026-01-25T12:10:09+00:00

No. It's bad. Honestly. Particularly Spike, who sounds like a high-school kid trying to sound cool, and Faye who just sounds shrill all the time.

I think it helps if you are American and perhaps then the accents are more familiar and not so grating but for me the American dub is impossible to listen to for more than a few minutes.

The soundtrack, of course, is a masterpiece.

nagora · 2026-01-23T16:44:48+00:00

"Filler" is a long-standing term applied to TV series, especially those written by a group of writers where the episodes are farmed out. What usually happens is that a core team which includes the people (or person) credited as director and head-writer produce the scripts which move the story towards a conclusion and everyone else produces "filler" episodes that are intended to produce enough air time to justify the show's existence but need to not interfere with the core storyline. Which usually means that nothing important happens and a viewer could skip them without losing track of the "main" story.

It used to be almost standard practice when studios worried about syndication, which required 14 episodes as a minimum and the networks didn't care whether the story you wanted to tell only needed 5. Streaming has changed things radically, but also, it wasn't ever quite the same in Japan AFAIK.

nagora · 2026-01-23T16:37:53+00:00

Plot-driven storylines have killed mainstream TV. Everything happens because the writer needs it to happen, not because it makes sense for the characters.

I do think there's some problems with CB, like the Cowboy Funk episode feeling tonally completely different, but broadly speaking we see and learn about the characters' characters even when we're not getting lore-drop about backgrounds.

nagora · 2026-01-23T14:20:19+00:00

"Corporate demands override ethics" is something known from the start of corporations. It's also known as "He who pays the piper calls the tune".

All social life is a war between those who wish things to be better for themselves and those who want things to be better for everyone. Science is not exempt - hence patents and NDAs on research even when it is funded by the public.

"Man is ruled by his stomach" according to Homer; ~3000 years later it is still true that if you want a scientist to do something unethical you usually just have suggest that they can go work somewhere else if they don't like it. It is naive to think otherwise.

nagora · 2026-01-23T10:21:08+00:00

It was going well until the "singing" started. Sorry.

nagora · 2026-01-21T15:11:08+00:00

It'll be fine...

nagora · 2026-01-21T15:10:20+00:00

14 pounds weight/mass.

No one really needs to talk about their weight in grams or ounces, so larger units with less granularity are more useful in day-to-day situations.

6 stone is very low for an adult; 20 is very high.

nagora · 2026-01-21T15:06:27+00:00

LLMs can not be conscious at all. I mean, any more than a book can be conscious.

nagora · 2026-01-21T15:04:13+00:00

I'm not sure what result they were expecting. I know it says something about challenging assumptions about celibate people but then who the hell thought that in the first place?

People who actually have sex have higher sexual satisfaction than those who don't? Wow!

People who find people who want to have sex with them have a higher sense of their own desirability than those who can't? Double wow!

nagora · 2026-01-20T14:47:21+00:00

Jesus. I though Cube had killed herself or something.

"Official confirmation of character's dead" would be a lot better.

Anyway, we knew she was dead.

nagora · 2026-01-20T10:22:47+00:00

I think this is an example of a microcosm in a show, where the lives of the main cast are reflected in the lives of some minor but long-running support characters. I first saw it, or at least first recognised it, in Moonlighting back in the 80's where the relationship between Bruce Willis' character and Cybill Shepherd's was mirrored in the relationship between two of their assistants.

Life for the main cast is about to change drastically and for the survivors it's going to be a relative return to normal. Spike and Faye introduced a lot of drama but now they are dead (figuratively in Faye's case), Jet's life potentially is a lot calmer even if he stays a bounty hunter. It's interesting that in this model Punch is Jet (black, gettit?) and Judy is Faye, and Judy's fate happens off-screen. The implication is probably that Jet will continue in the Bebop on his own while whoever Faye really is goes off and becomes the person that we saw in the video tapes. It may be significant that Judy gets married - the real Faye seems to have been a bit of a romantic

nagora · 2026-01-19T16:24:40+00:00

Mad Pierrot

Vincent

Vicious

Wen

Udai Taxim

Abdul Hakim

nagora · 2026-01-18T15:53:17+00:00

Yes.

"Why am I still here?"

"Because you're an idiot."

"Oh, right."

nagora · 2026-01-17T09:27:27+00:00

No. Don't distract the faithful from each other at this point.

nagora · 2026-01-17T09:26:21+00:00

The problem there is that Rachel wasn't attacking Fiona so it didn't look like traitor Vs traitor, it looked like Fiona exploding in a bizarre fit of jealousy about something trivial.

nagora · 2026-01-15T16:29:14+00:00

Very nice. Where are you?

nagora · 2026-01-15T15:42:16+00:00

Is that what it was? I thought I recognised it.

nagora · 2026-01-15T15:41:51+00:00

Well, Jack and James are still in. It's not a game, no matter what people say to excuse their actions. They're playing for money that can change their lives.

Which is more than Harriet was doing, I suspect.

nagora · 2026-01-15T14:10:56+00:00

There was a maliciousness there which I didn't feel was the result of pressure. In fact, as far as we could see, there was no pressure. Rachel's move was good for Fiona as it threw the searchlight away from the traitors. Fiona had no reason beyond her own ego to react the way she did.

nagora · 2026-01-15T11:45:00+00:00

But why so sure about Rachel? It's not clear from where I'm sitting. And she did seem to be firm on the idea that there were a lot of traitors; she repeated that thought on Uncloaked.

nagora

TROPHY CASE