D+L Podcast: Was “Toys in the Attic” Just a Big Nod to the Movie ‘Alien’?

Session 11: Toys in the Attic

For one month, The Dot and Line is publishing essays, interviews, and discussions about each episode of Cowboy Bebop, which turns 20 this April.

Episode 11 of Cowboy Bebop, “Toys in the Attic,” is secretly incredibly complex. Beyond ending on a lesson that distills the show’s entire moral compass into one sentence (“Don’t leave things in the fridge,” as clear a commentary on the central characters’ failures to break free from their past lives as any the show presented), it’s also a horror-comedy that ends with the crew seemingly dead. All to the tune of Tchaikovsky’s “Waltz of the Flowers” from his Nutcracker suite.

Here at the The Dot and Line, we wanted to do something a little bit different given the Space Cowboy Serenade we’ve put together this month. Normally. we’d publish a long, meticulously edited article breaking down all the details you might have missed in “Toys in the Attic” when you first watched it, or tackle some strange new way to think about the session. Instead, we decided to try something totally new for us: enlist our friends Kevin and Steve to record a podcast about the episode, which you can listen to right here:

That’s right! Smash that play button, Space Cowboys! This conversation breaks down the hidden references in “Toys in the Attic” and how they relate to and were almost certainly inspired by classic horror films like Alien and The Thing. We also break down the episode’s unique structure as a series of lessons and morals. We also try to figure out just where a mid-season entry like this one fits into the show despite ending on the tagline “THE END.” Whether we do a good job of it or not is something you can find out by listening.

So we’ll say it again: SMASH THAT PLAY BUTTON. Thanks for listening, cowpokes.

Credits

Hosts: Stephen Maher and Kevin Conway

Producers: John Maher and Eric Vilas-Boas

Editor: Eric Vilas-Boas

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