premiere air date: October 21, 2001
summary: Finally! Some Faye back story goodness. I think someone on rec.arts.anime.misc
(who's name is lost to antiquity) put it best when they said, "The great thing
about Faye's story is that it manages to be both funny and sad." We start
out this episode the way so many others do -- with the Bebop gang in need of money.
Jet decides to catch a bounty head who is "the smallest of the small fry", a Don
Juan con artist. After his departure, Faye, who's feeling. . . nostalgic? . .
. starts telling her life story to Ein. Needing to get it off her chest, I suppose,
but not really feeling free enough with the rest of the crew to be able to tell
them. What happened to Faye in her past? Now that would be spoiling, wouldn't
it? Suffice it to say that the Faye of the past was quite different from Faye
as we know her now. She was a trusting (!) soul, with a rather sad-yet-amusing
love affair to get over. Spike ends up hearing the whole thing, but not believing
a word of it (because Faye's a liar, doncha know). The feel of this episode is
really good - where the Bebop crew are involved as a whole, it truly feels like
family. Jet really is the father figure, Spike and Faye are in brother and sister
roles (this is really driven home by the fight they have near the end of the episode
- very sibling rivalry-ish), and Ed is the "baby" of the family. One of the nicer
episodes, I think, but I tend to rather enjoy Faye's back story.
rating: A
