Session 22: Cowboy Funk
For one month, The Dot and Line is publishing essays, interviews, and discussions about each episode of Cowboy Bebop, which turns 20 this April.
This article is about that lovable, fluffy-haired, bounty-hunting space cowboy: Cowboy Andy.
Well, it’s about that other lovable, fluffy-haired, bounty-hunting space cowboy, Spike Spiegel, as well — but really it’s about Andy. A whole lot of people don’t like ol’ Cowboy Andy, but if you’re one of them, read on, partner. Andy is much more than an annoying one-shot joke character—he’s a bona-fide piece of comedic meta-commentary genius. In fact, there are three levels to the Cowboy Andy gag, and each one is more complex than the last.
The first level is the most obvious: Andy is a ridiculous, over-the-top intentionally absurd lampooning of the notion of a “space cowboy.” He is pretty much just a full-on cowboy transplanted into space. But that alone is worth some laughs: the white fringed outfit, the Morricone-esque whistling leitmotif, the horse in the elevator… Andy is a solid example of the stylish-yet-goofy humor that Cowboy Bebop does so well.
However, the second layer to the gag is where Andy moves from simply being a walking pun to a thoughtful bit of satire. Specifically, Andy is a send-up of Spike, and the rivalry that emerges from the similarity makes for the central conflict of the episode (much to the chagrin of the perpetually-ignored Ted Kaczynski knock-off bounty head of the week).
The similarity is directly noted in the episode by the effortlessly insightful Faye Valentine, but it is often underestimated just how similar Andy and Spike really are. Right off the bat, there are the basic visual similarities, which are evident in their hairstyles, their similar facial features, and their comparably slender and athletic builds.
Then there’s their similarity in reputation, in that they are both successful bounty hunters and and thus well-known to wanted criminals, but also being caught by either of them is seen as specifically distasteful to criminals (more on why that is in a moment).
They are both a fairly even match when it comes to skill and strategy. At first, Andy seems quite dense in his interactions with Spike (repeatedly mistaking Spike for the bounty target) but he seems to be able to track down targets as well as the crew of the Bebop entirely on his own, since he shows up to all the same places they do in order to try to catch this episode’s villain of the week, a Unibomber parody known as Teddy Bomber. That’s pretty impressive, considering Spike often relies on Jet, Faye, and Ed for leads. Andy also proves to be precisely as strategic as our protagonist—both he and Spike correctly anticipate being drawn into the elevators by the bomber a day in advance, and both revert the override code the night before.
Physically, they seem to handle firearms with comparable skill, and go toe-to-toe with one another in hand-to-hand combat. There are many other small points of comparison, too: both have a trusty steed (Andy’s horse Onyx and Spike’s Swordfish II), both fancy themselves cowboys (though Andy obviously takes that more literally than jazzy hipster Spike), and both rely on luck to a great degree (seemingly the only explanation for how Andy gets by while being so dense, and for how Spike finally beats Andy by…angrily punching a desk).
But the greatest point of similarity is in their personalities. They are both stubborn, over-confident, and more than a little reckless, and each seems to have a lackadaisical attitude when not getting riled up by one another. These similarities cause an instant rivalry between the two, and the huge number of parallels displayed by Andy—while also making him so clearly different from Spike in other ways—makes him an excellent foil.
The last layer to the gag is where things get meta, and here, the joke is actually being played on the audience. In fact, the show’s creators are even poking fun at themselves.
Spike ultimately decides that he never really hated Andy once Andy admits to Spike being the better “cowboy” of the two. Once the threat to Spike’s ego is removed, he has no problem letting bygones be bygones. This is played for laughs as Spike chows down on Andy’s signature Son of a Gun Stew while the crew rolls its collective eyes. Yet the similarities between the two remain, and it seems that Spike prevailed in the end only through dumb luck. So what are we, as the audience, ultimately to make of Andy? He isn’t really ultimately inferior to Spike, and he isn’t a recurring foil or rival.
That’s the last punchline of Cowboy Andy: he’s a reminder to the audience that this outlandish cultural mashup can’t be taken too seriously. Space cowboys are an inherently romantic and unrealistic notion, whether they dress like Andy or rock a leisure suit and tie, like Spike. If you think that Spike is totally awesome and Andy is dumb, or if you want to write off Andy the same way that Spike does, or if you think “Cowboy Funk” is just a skippable filler episode, you might be missing out on some of the real genius of this show.
Cowboy Bebop is one of the inarguable masterpieces of anime, and it manages to appeal to a wider audience than most anime—not because it avoids all corniness and absurdity, but because it knows how to embrace and acknowledge those elements for what they are. Spike is a frequently corny, often lucky, and deeply flawed character. He hangs in the balance between being very human in his emotions and flaws and very stylized and unrealistic in his effortless cool, preternatural skill—which itself is both accented and subtly ribbed by the show’s slapstick comedy. Andy is an extraction of many of those unrealistic elements, and his presence is a big ol’ lampshade. He serves as a reminder to critics that the show knows where the absurdities lie, and to overly-serious fans of how artificial these characters really are.
So the next time you’re watching an episode of Cowboy Bebop and you see the end credit card that reads “SEE YOU, SPACE COWBOY…,” remember: that’s Andy’s line.
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