Back on the Bebop, as Spike looks out into space, it’s the look on Katerina’s face that the devil-may-care bounty hunter is haunted by – until Jet floats a cigarette over to him (which, hopefully, aren’t cancer-sticks of death in the future). It’s a hard-hitting episode: Katerina pays the ultimate price for hitching her wagon to the wrong star, and Spike quite clearly feels for her. But its the sense of camaraderie with Jet, someone else who knows the way the universe often works, that fits perfectly with the bluesy harmonica in the background – blues being a form of music that wrings some kind of levity from an oppressive life.

Subsequent additions to the Bebop crew are: super-intelligent dog Ein, on-again, off-again ally Faye Valentine, and hacker-savant Edward. Also introduced to the overall series in episode five, Ballad Of The Fallen Angels, is Vicious, Spike’s old partner from the Red Dragon crime syndicate. It may come as no surprise that Vicious isn’t the human embodiment of a puppy (his chosen pet is a vulture). Julia, the woman Spike had fallen in love with, had been Vicious’ girlfriend. There’s a parallel between that pairing and Asimov and Katerina, in how contradictory it seems for someone with a kind heart to be paired with someone who barely has a slice of humanity left.

But back to the Bebop crew, each of whom goes through a handful of episodes before they see the emotional landscape that Spike and Jet find semi-regularly — in between banter and action-movie worthy bounty hunting. In Sympathy For The Devil, they face off against a nearly century-old foe who looks like a little kid. That dynamic has helped to essentially drive the guy, once a music prodigy, to power-hungry bitterness. With the Bebop crew stopping him by causing him to rapidly age, the episode ends with Spike having a moment for that, with the harmonica again in the background – echoing the soulful tune the longtime musician could play.

Who’s cool anyway?

There are a few episodes in which we see Spike bond with people in ways that no one else on the Bebop does, though this is generally because Edward is on a different wavelength, Faye doesn’t trust anybody, and Jet is often dutifully with his ship (and bonsai plant). In Heavy Metal Queen, Spike connects with VT, an old space trucker who hates bounty hunters. And in Waltz For Venus, it matters to him when Rocco, a wannabe thug who stole a rare and valuable plant, wants to use said plant to cure his sister’s blindness. Checking Rocco’s story out, Spike visits the sister and lets her touch his face. When she tells him that there’s something beautiful in him, Spike laments that anything like that died in him a long time ago. After her brother dies in a shootout, Spike ensures that the plant pays for her operation and tells the sister – who is harboring the notion that her brother died in one of his stupid schemes – that her brother really was a great guy. He then goes out into the Venus cityscape and soberly watches Venus’ version of snow, which is what causes a small percent of people, like Rocco’s sister, to go blind.

Spike is also around when Faye is watching a video tape message from her past self, not wanting to let on that he cares. One of Bebop’s most sentimental moments results from Faye’s search for the place she comes from (In the show’s timeline, it’s only been a few years since she awoke from a cryogenic coma). Finding that her home on Earth is long gone, she despondently tells Edward about the importance of family, just after Ed has briefly reunited with her father. Ed promptly leaves to go after her father, and after one last sad look at the Bebop, Ein follows in tow. Having received a basketful of eggs from Ed’s father, Jet boils them up and prepares a spot for each member of the Bebop crew. After Spike shows him Ed’s outlandish goodbye, the two of them quietly scarf down all of the eggs.