House of R - Exploring 'Cowboy Bebop' With John Cho

Episode Date: November 22, 2021

Joanna and Mal take to space for a dive into the Netflix adaptation of anime 'Cowboy Bebop.' They discuss the difficulties of adapting the beloved property as well as the slight tweaks to the canon they enjoyed (01:33). Later, Joanna is joined by actor John Cho to dive into his role playing the lead, Spike, and to discuss staying loyal to the fans of the original anime and even the cultural impact of Harold and Kumar (40:12). Hosts: Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson Guest: John Cho Producers: Steve Ahlman Social: Jomi Adeniran Additional Production: TD St. Matthew-Daniel and Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Join Justin Charity and Micah Peters and Sound Only as they discuss their deepest, darkest thoughts about the millennial lifestyle, rap music, video games, anime, YouTube, social media, and their underlying themes. Check out Sound Only on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Tramphaya offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Tramphia is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self-inject trumphia, proper training is required. Tramphia is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease

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Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. I had a partner, believe it or not. He know what you used to be. Will I ever see you again? They tried to kill me, Anna. If you need to find me, I go by Spike Spiegel these days.

And welcome into the Ringerverse. The Ringers Nexus podcast for all things. Geek and Fandom. I'm Joanna Robinson. Joining me, my co-pilot for this episode on the Bebop. The great Mallory Rubin. Hello, Mallory. Where is our data dog?

We don't have a data dog on this episode, but we do a very special guest with pretty incredible hair. joining us for the end of the episode. It is Spikes Beagle himself. John Cho is here. I'll pause for cheers. Amazing. Yes.

Oh, not from you. From the audience at home. I hope you guys are all whooping. I'm so excited to have John Cho here. I'm a big John Cho fan. So I'm so excited. Talk about Cowboy Bebop, the Netflix adaptation of the classic

anime series. Before we get into any and all of that, I just want to throw on a quick programming note. You're listening to us on Monday of a holiday week, is Thanksgiving week. Are we taking this week off the rest of the week off? No, we are not. No, we're not.

No. If you are maybe home and you want to break from the fam, oh, man, we got stuff for you. Because we're about to kick off a new season of a Disney Plus Marvel show. It's Hawkeye time. Hawkeye is here. From dad of dogs to pizza dogs.

To chase your turkey with a little, Target practice with the Hawkeyes. So the Midnight Boys, Pugh, Poo, will be here on Wednesday, Thanksgiving Eve, to break down their instant reactions to the first two episodes of Hawkeye, which are dropping together Tuesday, midnight, on Disney Plus. And then Mal and I will be back on Friday to do our thing, which is The Deep Dive on Friday, House of Our Working Title. And we will be joined by executive producer and series director Reese Thomas. So that's going to be a really, really fun episode. We're really excited. I mean, this is my first time I'm going to be going to be going to be going to do like a week-to-week series with you on the show.

I can't wait. I'm so thrilled. I'm so excited. I know. I want a treat this is going to be. That's my favorite thing to do. So we thought we'd squeeze in one last binge, one last weekend where we watched 10 hours of television all in once. And plus.

because we watch some anime as well, to talk to you about cowboy beep-op. This is an icon of anime dumb, a sacred cow, if you will. It premiered in 1998. It ran in the U.S. starting in 2001. Only 26 episodes, self-contained story

with an incredible ending and just this piece of beautiful art that got so many Americans and people around the world. into anime in a way that they hadn't before. I think before this anime had been put in sort of the four kids only kind of bucket. Pokemon was around. So that's our stuff.

But this really brought to at least the Western audiences a sense of, oh, this can be on another level, this art form and sort of open the floodgates. Folks have been trying to make a live-fashioned cowboy bebop for a very long time. Back in the early arts, it was supposed to be a Keanu Reeves movie. which could have been fun. But here we are. That is a fun alternate history. Yeah, isn't it?

And the year of our Lord 2021, 10 episodes dropped this weekend on Netflix from Andre Nemek and Christopher Yost. And I just want to shout out one of my favorite writers, Javier Greo. Mark's watch is one of the credited writers

on the show as well. And he's been tweeting about B-Bop. So if you want to get some behind the scenes info, you can go follow his Twitter, which is never a bad idea because he's got one of the greatest minds when it comes to breaking down writing television. Before I start peppering you with questions, Mal, I just want to read, in case folks haven't, don't know what Kew of you is about it all. What are you doing here? But happy to have you.

I could do my best to try to break down it was, but I really loved this description from this Atlantic article from Alex Suske. And this was about the Bebop Blu-ray release. he wrote a beautiful essay in the Atlantic a couple years ago about Bebop. So I'll just read this premise for you. Set in 20171, Bebop imagines a dystopian future where Earth has been irrevocably damaged due to the creation of a stargate,

forcing humans to evacuate the planet and create colonies around the solar system. The result is a galaxy of lawlessness where crime lord's rule and cops pay bounty hunters often refer to as cowboys to handle some of the grunt work. People drink and dive bars, income equality is terrible.

Everyone speaks like their background extras in Chinatown. The show ultimately features so many cross-ranging influences and nod to other famous works. It's almost impossible to keep track. It's Sergei Leone in a spacesuit. It's Bush Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with automatic weapons. So there we go. We are aboard the Bebop, a rundown spaceship that used to be a fishing spaceship. And we start with our two pals, our brothers in arms.

Jet Black and Spike Spiegel. And we go from there. We add to the fam from there. Mallory, what was your... I don't mean to expose... I don't need to call you out here. Call me out. What was your exposure to bebop and anime in general

before this past weekend? Yeah. No, I'm glad you asked. I feel like this is important context as I have joined you today to participate in this chat. I'm new to Bebop. I...

In fact, mere weeks ago, here on the ringerverse did a couple pods on Star Wars Visions, which I so adored. And one of the conversations that we had on the Ring ofverse about visions was with our colleagues, Justin Charity and Micah Peters from Sound Only, who adore anime and our anime obsessives. Basically through the lens of if you liked visions, here's some other anime that you should check out and check out immediately. And naturally, Bebop was on the list. It was on my list to check out the original anime heading into the Netflix show.

We talked about this a bit on our fall, hype meter, fall with an asterisk, fall into winter, hype meter, pop, what are we looking forward to? And so I began to watch the anime in the days leading up to the Netflix release so that I had that context, the sense of the story, the sense of the original, beloved, adored show. Because of course, even though I hadn't seen Bebop, I knew how much it meant to people. You always hear about it.

It's recommended by you and so many other people whose opinions I value and trust that I'm kind of like, I don't really have an explanation for why it took me this long to get to it, but I was very eager to explore the Bebop world at last. I watched all 10 episodes of the Netflix show. So, Friday night into Saturday morning, a true Netflix binge experience. So I watched all that. I had watched, I think at that point, six of the original episode, six of the

original 26, and have continued from there. So interesting to get that initial exposure and then watch the live action adaptation and now return to it. And I very much look forward to completing my original anime B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-Fer. And, yeah, my background is that I had seen Cowboy Bebabop before. It had been a while, so I did a refresher and then watched all 10 episodes. I would not call myself anything remotely close to an anime expert or anything like that. I do think our colleagues have that beat like beautifully covered. But, you know, when something is recommended and recommended and recommended and recommended, even if it's not a genre that you're used to, you want to check it out. And so I think it is an extremely interesting vibe to try

to explain to people. It's like you had to be there to understand what Bebop is going for. The like the melange of genres. The way it's just, sort of like slowly washes over you some of these like deeper feelings and philosophical elements and stuff like that. But I do think that it was just really credit at the time and currently for its like substance that matches the style. It's not just stylistically beautiful. There's so much substance here. It's a very, it's an incredible noir story. I'm a big noir fan. But, you know, it's got like the Western adventure and comedy in there as well. In terms of a spoiler warning, right?

Which we want to talk about. It's always tricky to know how to talk about a 10 episode binge drop from Netflix, right? Right. So we are going to talk about something specifically the ending, probably a little later in our chat here, but like we are going to talk about the full 10 episodes. That's something we're going to do. Not too much detail, but it's all on the table. In terms of my chat with Jon Cho, we kept this sort of like specific discussion of the ending of this 10 episode season towards the back of our interview. So if you want to skip all the way over to John and hear him talk about his hair, which, why wouldn't you?

You can do that if you haven't finished your binge yet and come back to us for everything else. But just that's a blanket friendly neighborhood spoiler warning. Did I cover it, Mal? Did I do it? You did. I really look forward to revisiting the how do we appropriately give a spoiler warning for a Netflix binge come the new season of Stranger Things. This will be an ongoing discussion for us here at the Ring ofverse. Let's talk about influences.

This is one of my favorite things to think and talk about. And when I dug into some of the stuff that influenced Cowboy Bebop and was influenced by Cowboy Bebop, I thought it was really fascinating. So when Chinchiro Watanabe put together Cowboy Bebop in the 90s, these are some of the things he put into the stew. Blade Runner, Bruce Lee, Lupin III, which is a popular anime, Desperado, A Better Tomorrow, Italian Fat. the film, Coffee, which is a Pam Greer, Blacksploitation film, Hansel on the Falcon, of course, John Wu, now 2 and 2 is in there, and The Crow. Which or any of these sort of pop out to you is like, of course, I see that in there, Mao. It's a good question. And my answer might sound like a cop-out, but I think it probably taps into the heart of your point, which is no one thing stands out

more than any other. And it's that hybrid and that blend. You know, it's so, so interesting to hear you say, like, that you had to be their essence that kind of permeates the conversation. And this might be just like sheer ignorance on my part. But one of the things that I was really taken by, and I should say perhaps unsurprisingly, that I have been absolutely loving exploring the anime, the original at long last. And in general, I love animation. and I've really been loving my anime explorations recently. And one of the reasons that I like sunk into it so quickly and felt that it was so immersive is because it feels sort of timeless to me.

Like obviously it is hyper-futuristic and taps into a lot of anxiety about the decay of anything resembling organized, predictable civilization. But the through lines, ultimately, of the story, something that you and I love and have each talked about a million times before and we'll continue to talk about until we're both settled into the earth dust. Yeah. Should the earth still exist, barring a Astral Gate incident. That found family idea.

the weight of the past, that blend of adventure and the pop and sizzle and burst of this colorful, vibrant, constantly surprising universe with those eternally anchoring elements of who are you? Why are you that way? And can you find people to surround yourselves with who will ultimately understand and accept that and help you work through whatever you need to work through? Like that is eternal. You know, that is a story that even inside of the very specific fabric and fiber of the Bebop palette and aesthetic and vibe, because Bebop is so clearly a vibe, that's a throughline across so many stories that we adore. And so all of those different influences that you cite, it's like, yeah, of course, I see that.

Yeah, of course, I see that. Even just hearing you say, like, you know, lawless earlier, it's like, how can you not think of Star Wars and a space opera? but you as you noted are really drawn to those like noir elements. And, you know, I love for how many times Spike goes out of his way to say, like, I'm not a cop, how that noir detective energy is present paired with that Wild West bounty hunter exploration, romance, friendship. It's a, it's a stew. It's a brew.

And it's a beautiful one. It's a stew. It's a brew. It's a, it's a stir-frew. I know. And I think what was interesting, I was reading an interview with Watanabe, I think maybe he gave around the time where he was talking about just how popular Blade Runner was among the anime scene and that idea of like a neo-noir, that idea of taking these like, you know, dusty 40s, 30s and 40s hard-boiled tropes and putting them in like, you know, neon and climate change of the future. You know what I mean? And I think that really comes through. And something that I love about, the bebop as sort of a location it's funny

we talk about this when we talk about succession where like they don't have a home their home is their private jet like you know

when your home is a ship just like you can feel how like run down you think you kind of know what it smells like do you know what I mean and it just feels like

like beautiful and run down and there's something really poetic about it so yeah all kinds of like old noir spaghetti westerns it's all in there

and like these are these are titans of film genres, like the Western, the noir, encompasses so much, you know, to cram that all into like a dystopian sci-fi adventures a lot. And like the B-Bob encompasses a lot. It can hold a lot of modes, right? You've got that poignant, regretful, out of the past, noir element. And then you just have like fun, weird adventures like Spike and Jet in the anime trying to chase down a beta max, you know, stuff like that, a VCR. Are there? You know, it's like, that's what Cowboy Bebop can be. And it is a tough challenge, I think, for anyone to try to match that tone. And so what I think is both great and not great about that Netflix series is like, so they're not doing a shot by shot remake. But they're also not, you know, there are story threads from the original, especially the first episode. You know, there are some shots that are shots from the anime.

But, you know, they're, you know, to borrow a bebob jazz term, they're riffing on it, right? They're riffing on the original. And the question is, like, I can let go of this isn't exactly what the anime is. Like, I don't feel it's ever necessary or fruitful to cling so tightly to the belief that you can recapture lightning in a bottle. But you want whatever the new riff to be, to be something that you're excited about and here for. You know what you mean? Mad Max Ferry Road doesn't feel like an original Mad Max film to me, but it feels like a really exciting other thing that fits in the same universe, you know.

Right. It's a tricky thing to, and again, I'm about like halfway now through the original. So I have not seen the full thing, but I've seen enough, I think, to be able to say, oh, yes, this is what this is a reference to. This is a callback. This shot is a recreation. This is an echo of this moment. and also to be able to say, okay, these are the things that were brought way more centrally to the fore.

This was altered. This was moved back into the shadows, et cetera. In theory, conceptually, I actually like that approach as an attempted balancing act of referencing and clearly honoring and calling back to not only the influence, but this sacred thing that people love. recognition of where this came from and why we're all here talking about this and watching it and how much it means to people, while also not attempting, as you're saying, to recapture lightning in a bottle because you have to admit up front and acknowledge that you can't. And the only way really to try to shoot another bolt of something that feels electric through our TV screens is to do something that feels fully realized on its own terms.

So the flip side of that, as you just like both of us are describing it, is I think, quite apparent, which is that's not just a balancing act. That's a tightrope that you're trying to walk across. And it's really easy to lute to tip over in either direction. And I think that because I didn't have heading into my first viewing of the Netflix show, the years-long attachment to the original that many have, it's almost impossible for me to, totally put myself in that headspace of like what it would feel like to watch this exact live action adaptation. And especially there's this larger context of how difficult it has been to successfully bring anime stories into live action and to capture their essence and their spirit and what made them so special. I do think our producer, Steve, is a speed racer apologist. Is that correct, Steve? Do I remember that right? That is correct. I am. Steve loves Speed racer.

I do. I do. I unabashedly do. True. There. Speed racer, Avatar, the Last Air Bender. I mean,

that's not anime exactly, but that is another classic example. Where, yeah, it's hard to, there's so much you can do in the animated form that you can't do in live action no matter how good your special effects are,

you know? And so it's like... Whether it's something like the, the look and feel of the cosmos and each of these new space settlements, these space colonies, and the way that like the flowers fall from the sky on Venus or the crackle of the advertisement spinning in space around the casino

or just the actual like mechanics of the space travel. The choreography of the fight sequences is like literally something that is impossible to rep- like it's almost not a reasonable expectation to go into it and say I would want that to be replicated because, you know, people can't move the way that drawings can. Of course. Like you say it out loud and it's like, well, yes, that's a perfectly logical thing that I understand. But still, when you're watching it, you can't help but just process it on an emotional level. And it's like, well, that doesn't look and feel the way that I wanted this to look and feel. That doesn't look and feel the way that I'm used to this looking and feeling. And so I think those

gaps can maybe feel like chasms. For me, I'll just say that the thing that I loved most about the Netflix version was just the primary characters and the performances, which I thought for the main bebop trio and, of course, got a shout out my dude Ine, who I just adore, as you know, and I texted you about him all weekend. But the main. the main three performances are just like awesome. They're great.

They're fantastic. They're so wonderful. Yeah. So that was really fun to watch. It was fun to watch those performers on the bebop, finding their rhythm and this new life and routine together. That was the part I enjoyed the most. Let's like fast forward to something that I was planning to talk about later. But we both had the same favorite episode, which I think is episode seven.

Yes. Galileo Hustle. Love a long con, as you know. But it's like a, you know, a con job episode. The Core 3, Spike, Jet, Faye, Joncho, Mustafa, Shakir, and Danielle Pignetta each get something to do. There's a great outside energy from, you know, this con woman who enters their life. I was like, if they make a season two, this is what it should be.

It should be the Core 3 plus Ein. And like capers and heists and adventures. Like that's that's the mode that this show does really well. And there's some other stuff. And Ed now too, right? And Ed now too. I've met Ed in the original as well. I have some questions about the way that Ed is depicted in the finale of this.

Like, I would recommend if they do have a season two and Ed is back, which Ed is probably back for season two, to maybe take that character in a slightly different direction than this intro. because that is especially an anime character that is hard to embody in the real life. And they chose to cue really closely to the anime original. And I would suggest they try to take a more Fay Valentine approach and sort of remix and reconsider for live action. But let me just zip really quickly through the things that Cowboy Vobab has influenced, which is we should shout out Firefly. Joss has never said it. But, I mean, come on.

Guardians of the Galaxy, that's sort of a fee. back loop, but Ryan Johnson's brick, which Ryan has talked about over and over and over again, I guess he told Joseph Gordon Levitt to model his walk off of Spike Seagull's walk, which is amazing. It's like this shoulder hunch sort of thing that he does, but there's a bunch of stuff in brick that is cowboy bebop, which I didn't know until researching for this episode. Kill Bill. Obviously, again, Tarantino's in sort of a feedback loop where Bebop takes from early Tarantino, and then later Tarantino kind of takes from Bebop.

But both of them are trafficking in this idea of cool, which is so hard. Like, it's so hard to be cool. And do you know, I mean, that sounds so dumb, but it's like. I don't think that sounds dumb at all. When you're trying, like, coolness is so hard to replicate, I will say. So if something is inherently cool, which, like, Spike is cool. Nighties Tarantino and certainly, like, Spike is.

And I certainly think that John Cho is cool and whatever he does. But the coolness overall of the show, I don't know, again, it's a vibe. Avatar The Last Year Vendor. There's a character who looks like Spike and is named Jet. There's the cabbage merchants are like a riff on these three old guys who pop up again and again and again in the bebop world. So all of that, all that stuff is like really, like the stuff you love, those creators really were swimming in the bebop sea as they made it. So I think all that's interesting. And then we should also just mention really quickly that Yoko Kano, who Joncho talked to,

about a little bit, but like that Yoko Kano did the, the live action, she is the inspiration for Ed, incredible stuff to know, created the music for the incredible music for the original and came back and did the music for this one as well. And I think it's one of those things where like you can't do it without the music. It's inextricably entwined with how to tell this story. So yeah, I mean, I don't know if there's anything else you want to say specifically about the core three. Are there any like changes or updates or differences that you thought were interesting? Faye was incredible. Danielle was incredible.

I was like enraptured the entire time watching her. I just thought she was fabulous, funny, quirky, a badass. But, you know, as, as I think at the heart of, in addition to the long con and the, the twists and turns and the, the episode that we both picked as our favorite, one of the, one of the reasons that I love that. so much is because it's like Faye's backstory episode and the episode where we and she get to unlock more about her roots and who she is and what her history is. And I guess that's what I would just say in general is that like most of my favorite episodes or sequences or moments in the show, perhaps unsurprisingly given what I have come to discover about the core DNA of the Bebop experience, tap into those questions from the past. And that,

the characters either running away from them or looking to actively grapple with them. What are they willing to admit to each other? What are they willing to admit to themselves? When? And the way that even when something is very centrally focused on one of the characters like Faye in that episode, you still have moments there where we can see how Spike is processing Jets' reaction to the fact that Faye withheld something. and what that might mean for Spike and Jet.

So those were the things that I enjoyed most about the show. And obviously, like, that's one of the really central changes with Spike in particular and the vicious Julia plot, not even the way that all shakes out, which I think we'll talk about in a second here in the spoiler territory, but just how ever present it is. From the beginning through the entire season, it's not just these like little glimpses and whispers and snippets that we're piecing together. We have a, I mean, we do get an entire fearless, vicious Julia backstory episode. It's the penultimate episode, which was interesting to give us that. But throughout, that's something that is right in the spotlight.

And I'd be curious to see how that change in particular tracks for people who have really loved the original for so long. Because just in a more like fundamental storytelling level, I like that because I like having a fuller understanding of like what moments and happenings have influenced where a person is and how they're living their lives currently. but it is a colossal change, both in terms of the amount of it we get and where it nets out, right? So I'll be curious to see how people feel about all of that. Yeah, let's talk about the ending in a second.

I do want to mention, I want to shout out right quickly before we get there. My friend David Erlich, who is, can be a very salty individual, I think wrote a really incredible, it's a negative review, but I think it's a really incredible piece

of writing that he wrote for IndiWire because he really loves Cowboy Bebop. He found some things to love in this. like us, he praises the trio, the core trio and stuff like that. You know, like, sometimes you read a negative review and you're like, this person was just having a really fun time ripping this thing to shreds. That is not at all what David did here. It's really fair, I think, for what he points out. And at the same time, a true celebration of the original. So I think David represents one of those people who just, like, the original is in their DNA. So they're going to be really particular about what they feel is different and missing.

and stuff like that. But there's this one sentence I want to shout out that David wrote about the original. He says it found something immensely sad and how its characters were lured back toward their buried trauma, often at the direct expense of the found family that had shown them a way forward. And I love that. And that, I think, leads us directly into talking about the ending, both of the original bebop and this first season of the Netflix series. So, spoilers, aoy. the way the original ends

and obviously they weren't going to end this season this way because they want to do multiple seasons, right? But the way that the original ends is with Spike leaving the bebob joining up with Julia, Julia dies in a beautiful sad moment. She enters the show proper because before that she was only like memory really well sort of to spike. She enters the show and she dies, right?

And she says, it was a dream. That's what she says if she dies. Like, what an anime thing to say, amazing. And then Spike has this showdown with vicious and kills vicious. And then Spike collapses in a way where, like, you're pretty sure he's also dead, though Wadinaabe has never confirmed that that's what happened. But that's one of those, like, you know, again, thinking about break or something, like, thinking about someone just, like, not being able to roll forward and being pulled back

and you being, like, so sad for them that they got pulled back into. this thing that you wish you could roll forward from. It's a beautiful, I think, just a really beautiful, messy, ambiguous ending and the kind of thing that's going to make this perfect sort of jewel box-contained story stick with viewers for a long time. We'll talk about how the live action is different, but I just wanted to get your, if you wanted to weigh in on the anime ending of it all, even though you've watched it. I know.

I just spoiled you. I was my first time experiencing it, but it sounds like, it's a lot. honestly, the thing that I was thinking of as you were describing that was like in terms of the ambiguous nature or something like, you know, the fade to black and sopranos. But then also what you're describing about this eternal pull of the past. I'm like thinking about like the final passages of the great Gatsby, you know, born back ceaselessly into the past. Yeah, yeah.

So that's what that made me think of. I mean, that sounds very sad, but also very poignant. I could see how that, why that has stuck with people. I look forward to experiencing it. But, you know, like you said, the distinction of just needing to keep making new seasons and churning out new episodes, obviously it wasn't going to go that way. But maybe there will be eventually a version of that, at least as far as Spike's fate, ultimately goes. That could be in the future on the Netflix front. Obviously, Julia's story is very different here.

Yeah. So they make this big change with Julia, not just as you say, to bring her through the whole story. in the anime, she's a member of the syndicate. She's not like a noir lounge singer type figure or whatever. But for me, what didn't work fundamentally for this Netflix version is all the vicious Julia stuff didn't work for me. Which is, I mean, it's kind of bizarre because the actor who plays vicious Alex Hassel is a great actor in general. And it's actually really fun in that flashback episode you mentioned where he gets to play a different flavor of vicious. you can see that he has some great range and a lot of charisma.

Whatever choice he made or the director's made or the writers made for how he would portray the character throughout the rest of the season didn't really work for me and the Julia of it all didn't really work for me either. But at the same time when I was thinking about the ending and how she has this big turn, right? So in the live action, Julia sort of turns on Spike and she's like, you left me here, you left me here with him, you made me this way sort of thing and pushes him out the window.

shoots him out the window. John Cho talks about this a bit, but like, I was like, what I preferred it? They stick to the original anime. And then my second thoughts were, but that's a really passive role for a female character. And this is a more active role for a female character. So in theory, I applaud trying to find a more active, interesting path for Julia. This is just not how I would have done it. But I see what they were trying to do.

and I think it was the right instinct, but just maybe the wrong execution. I don't know. What do you think? Yeah, no, I agree. I think that, again, more conceptually or theoretically or maybe even philosophically, like putting the Julia character

in a position where she is not only more present throughout, but then assumes this great amount of agency, makes her own decisions, and is a more active player and character. and, you know, is not presented here as this, like, ghost in the memory of these men's lives. In theory, I'm into that. I think, like you're saying, it's more about the specific execution. I think that just with vicious and the syndicate, that was all just, like, so campy and heavy-handed. I think that one of the reasons the core trio really hummed together

is because even though there are certainly these like exaggerated and heightened moments for all of the characters, there's like a little bit of like a subtlety. And it's that cool quality that you were talking about earlier that, you know, permeates around spike and everything in his orbit. And when you're pulled away from that, the elements of the. story where he and the bebop crew are not present just feel like they have a very different energy and are operating at a very different frequency and one that is just not as successful as everything happening inside of the bebop. So it stands out and really stark contrast and it

makes it harder to appreciate the added thing that we're getting because the nature of how it is presented to us just doesn't work just doesn't work as well. And then I think becomes that one of those things where every time you cut away from the core three, you're kind of like, oh, I wish I were back with the core three. You know what I mean? And that's, that's never a mode you want for your show. Just a few more things I want to say before I go to our interview. Logistically, we should point out that they shot this film in New Zealand at the same time as Lord of the Rings and John Cho talked about this a little bit. Like a lot of the film crew in New Zealand had been like snapped up. So the, the Cowboy Beebaugh. production team was maybe not working with the strongest that New Zealand had to offer, possibly, is what I might say. And then also, I mean, this has been widely publicized, but John Cho sustained a very serious injury while filming a fight scene. So they had to take like several months off while he rehabbed and all of that. I just want to say for the Jon Cho of it all, and this is not because he's on the show. I love John Cho in general. John Show has. always deserved to be at the center of a big, like, you know, jazzy, no pun intended story. I was a big fan of selfie. I don't know if you ever watched the selfie, which was like this weird, like, My Fair Lady update sitcom he did with Karen Gillen on ABC, canceled after a season because conceptually it was a little like whatever, but he's fantastic on that. our producer Steve agrees.

Selfie is really underrated. Terrible name. Really, I think, dragged down by the name. But Karen and John are incredible. I have an incredible chemistry on that show. And he's just been doing such great work for so long. And I think he's underrated. And I just want to rate him.

And I think he rises to a really, really, really tough challenge in the show. Like, perfect casting, perfect execution. What do you think, Maloney? I thought he was dynamite. Just an absolute joy to watch. Yeah. And, you know, I won't spoil your interview, but I will just tease that one of the parts I enjoyed listening to the most was you two talking about how aging up the character allowed them to tap in to all of these things we just discussed, the way to the past, the life that you've lived, how it bears out on your future, et cetera. And I thought that was a really compelling way to frame it and think about it.

and like a lot of what we're describing here taps into that idea too. So he was fantastic. So glad that you got to chat with him. I am just hoping for a lot of my dude, the dad a dog in season two. That's my closing word. My other closing word is to just encourage everyone to go read Justin Charity's piece on the ringer.com. Justin loves anime and is, I think he would be the first to say,

hard to please when it comes to the live action adaptations. And he found a lot to like in this Netflix show, which I was really interested to see. So I would encourage everybody to go check that out to see Justin's perspective as well. Yeah, it's a great piece. And like us, he really, like it's hard. I haven't found anyone who has, even like I said, my very critical friend, Divider, like has, has an issue with the core three. So I really do think there's a path forward for season two.

where if they lean into their strengths, I could really see growing into something. And so, you know, Netflix doesn't officially greenlit it. But it's, you know, my experience with the show was, it was mixed, to be honest with you. But it's, there's something there that I would like to see more of in season two. Agreed. Oh, quick recommendation. Steve, Steve will kick me off the podcast if I don't say this.

If you haven't seen searching a great film that Joncho did a couple years ago, I recommend it. Also, Columbus, another really great film. that he did a couple years ago. So, you know, if you just know him as Sulu, that's a great thing to know him from because he's great in those films. But there's a lot more there. And he talks about Harold and Kumar,

of course, a great recommendation. So let us hear from Joncho. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech. Everyone knows winter is the MVP and make it a mess. You don't need weather tech floor liners in the summer, unless you hit the beach or go camping. Then you'd want a cargo liner. Or a road trip goes sideways.

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Annette Benning and Ed Harris now streaming on Paramount Plus. John Cho, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for being on the show. Thanks for inviting me to the ringerverse. Welcome into the ringerverse. As we talked about it a little bit before we started recording, that this is going to go up after folks have had a chance to bid, the whole season of Cowboy Bebop over the weekend,

if that's how they choose to consume it. Yes. But just in case they haven't, we'll maybe save some of the spoiler talk for the end in case they're like, should I check the show out? I'm not sure. We're going to make a case.

But I do want to ask you some sort of, because I've seen a couple of your interviews at this point where you've been hesitant to talk about things. And what I love to do about an interview after the fact is we can open the spoiler gates. But let's start in a more general way. One thing that I've heard you say that I loved is you were talking about the original anime. And as you thought about sort of the soup that it came out of came out in 1998, right?

That it was this pre-2000s anxiety is how you described it. I thought that was fascinating. And I was wondering if you could talk about that a little more. Well, I mean, it does involve a post-apocalyptic vision of Earth, which is not unusually. But I guess the timing of it as we were rounding the corner of the millennium is interesting. And so, you know, for me, so I watched it for the first time in 2019, going back and looking at it, it was a, well, I guess, you know, I will say that any vision of the future is always such a photograph of your emotional state at the time in which you make it, you know. So I thought it was an interesting mix of optimism and pessimism about the future. And I feel like our or the current slate of dystopian futures, or rather the future, has become really dark.

And it reflects where we are right now, which is maybe the precipice of civilization. He said with a laugh. Yeah, you know, climate anxiety has definitely, I think, invaded a lot of our visions of a future. And it almost seems idealistic to think that we will be planet hopping, you know, years from now in the Bebop universe. And honestly, there's so much fun in the in the Cowboy Bebop universe. There's so much lightness. There's so much joy. Mixed in with obviously the characters kind of dark past and their journeys, but there is a kind of buoyancy to this version of like post-earth that is different to me and felt different.

And I guess what attracted me was or what it separated it was that it's easy to go dark. I sometimes I think like, you know, for young actors, it's young male actors. The easiest emotion to access is rage and anger. And it takes a lot of work. It took a lot of work. I shouldn't speak in generalities. I'll speak for myself. It took a lot of work for me to go towards more complicated emotions when I was younger.

And I would try and I look back at stuff that I did. And I'm like, oh, really the point of that was he was in love with her. He wasn't angry at all. You know what I mean? But that's how it read on the page to me because I was a young man. And I suppose I don't know why I'm making this connection. It just seems like it's easier to go completely dark. It's obvious.

And I suppose the bebop universe is a more difficult one to create. That was my impression. Yeah. And I'm wondering if you see. think in pulling it forward from 98 to, you know, 2019 when you were sort of thinking about doing it to now, do you think making this universe again through the lens of 20 years later, how does it change? I mean, because it almost feels more optimistic, the version that you've put forth in this show. What do you think?

Well, I guess I would agree with you in the sense that it's become a, a memory piece. I mean, it does sort of, the show explicitly deals with characters who are haunted by memories and kind of dealing with their past. And so in a big picture way,

I suppose, we're looking backwards at this thing. And so it is imbued with memory and not literal sepia tones, but you know what I mean? And the show is very blue, in my opinion, but,

But, yeah, I mean, we're looking backwards at a vision of the future that shoots past us. So it's funny. I know you talked to my pal Alex at Vulture about, you know, creating this role in some of the conversations around and your anxieties. I mean, like almost every answer you gave Alex, you were self-aware about this was like about your anxieties about making this. And I'm curious now that we're on the precipice of people watching it. Like, you know, I'm talking to you on the day it's going to drop tonight at midnight. Where's your anxiety level? How are you feeling?

I'm really feeling good about it. I think my anxiety was like we were in this cocoon in New Zealand during COVID. And it was only upon reflection that I realized because of the two-week quarantine involved, we didn't have any visitors to our set. We didn't have typically agents and managers who drop by for visit, studio executives. Actors will fly in and out. They're shooting a week and then they'll go away for a few weeks. But everyone stayed.

It was just summer camp. If summer camp involves making a giant sci-fi. That was what my summer camp was. I don't know. I don't know what yours was like, but yeah. So I came back to the United States only a few weeks ago. And I'm just getting reacquamated. And it seems fine now.

I'm like, we made something. We are proud of it. And we made it with the right intentions. And the reception will be what it'll be. And I realized, oh, I've done this before. I literally, I was just out of practice thinking about releasing stuff. I've been working on this for a long time because of the Achilles tear that I suffered. So this has become, the gestation was just insanely long.

And so I personally was dealing with that anxiety. And there was some built-in stuff just because the anime was so beloved. It's a property that a lot of people are precious about. And I'm, you know, that's its own hurdle to clear. You've swam in this ocean before, though. You've made a Star Trek, a couple Star Trek films. Like that's the property people are really precious of. Is there anything that you're really precious about

that you would have a lot of thoughts and feelings about if someone were to remake anything that you loved growing up? If someone were to remake Harold and Kumar, I thought we had a very specific posture when it came to how we discussed race. And I just think it belongs. to us the way we talk about it, which was to, I think it was genuine, but self-aware and sharp and political and stupid all at the same time.

Right. Underline stupid. So, like, it's become very difficult to talk about race in America of late, I think, more and more difficult. It seems annually to talk about race in a way that's productive. and to the point where I'm not sure whether we could make that again, but if someone did make that other than us, and they didn't understand that posture towards race,

I would be bummed out. How could they take the same posture when so much has shifted in the years? Like you guys were making those movies at a very different place in the conversation. So yeah, it does feel like unreplicable. Yeah, and also there was this sort of, Now we're talking about Harold and Kumar, but there was a political climate that seems anachronistic now, which is, I don't know. I have concerns about the state of the republic and can it survive.

And so that is a very different kind of place to be when you're like, Harold and Kumar, to some extent really was just talking about America. You know, like, what is this country? And now I feel like we're kind of unsh – we're not agreeing as much on what America is. So let's all go to space. Let's little follow, like, Elon Musk into space and just populate our own planets. We're no quitters. We're no, no.

I want to ask you you mentioned shooting in New Zealand. I was wondering, are you – were you at all bumping up – New Zealand's not a huge place. Were you all bumping up or aware of the Lord of the Rings production that was sort of going on at the same time as you? Were you guys sharing any teams? shooting on the South Island and we are on the North Island. So, no, but there was like, I believe it was a crew competition to see because there was just kind of limited labor.

Yeah, yeah. And so they were as employers, I think it wasn't antagonistic, but there was a, you know, there's so many apples in the bin. Yeah, and Netflix and Amazon are like trying to snap up all the app as many apples. they can. I can see. I can see that happening. You mentioned your injury in the rehab time that it took and how much you were thinking about the character during that time or the project during that time. Were any changes made to the show or the story at all in that pot? Like, you know, a COVID pause prompted a lot of people to sort of rework the project they were working on. This isn't a COVID pause. This is an ACL pause. But like, were there any changes made during that time that you're aware of? I'm, you know, I'm trying to remember. The scripts I read and the scripts that we eventually shot. And I don't remember huge swerves, but Andre Nemeck, our showrunner, says it was extremely useful that time to go back and polish.

Another thing he was doing was, I think he was imagining, reimagining where things might go in season two. He put some thought into that if we got a chance to do. that. And if so, it was just adjusting things slightly so that it would track better going into season two if that happened. I may be talking out of turn, but I think he was, um, plant some seeds here that might pay off there. So things that I'm unaware of because I don't know where we might go in season two, but he was definitely, he does if we, if we do it. And it's definitely setting things up. Um, you're still rocking the Spike Spiegel length of your hair right now. What's the,

what's the latest and the greatest on season two? What have you heard? Well, we still see. I don't think I could, even if I knew, I don't think I could say. That's a good, that's a good answer. But the hair may be, but I haven't been told to cut it. This is like when I used to watch Kit Harrington's hair when he said he was done with Game of Thrones, but his hair was still John Snow long and I'm like, so I'll keep the John show.

a hair watch alive. Hair watch. You mentioned also that something that you love about the original that you wanted to make sure came through in this production was the weirdness. Like keep E-Bob weird. What's the weirdest?

Yeah, right? Like, what's the weirdest thing that you're glad you kept? Did you fight for anything specifically? The thing that I must have thought that we must have been discussing when I said that to Andre in our first meeting was, I'm sure we were discussing Yoko O'Connell and the music. And I don't mean to dismiss her by attaching the word weird to her

because I wasn't even saying that. That's a compliment in my world, you know. To me too, because she's so idiosyncratic and every choice is, I always say that every choice she makes is just the opposite of what a traditional music supervisor would make. I mean, I've heard temp tracks, and I'm just, you know, you go into an early cut and they have the tempest stuff

and I'm like, well, that's so, it brings me down because it's just a temporary thing that's not, that doesn't have any flavor or personality. And she just goes, I say she changes the meanings of scenes because of her choices, you know? But yeah, so that's what I was talking about. I'm sure that's what we were discussing at the time.

And I think we did keep it weird. I'm thinking when you say that, I think of the fights and how in some ways they're like always divorced from sort of a machismo. There's always like kind of a weirdness or helplessness or an improvisational quality to all the fights that I really like. And then, oh, I'm sorry, I can't think of something weird at the moment. but I will tell you a detail of something that I changed. And very early on that I'm very happy about, which is we walked in the galley, the Bebop kitchen. And I said, and it was like all stainless steel stuff.

Like it looked really sort of the top. Yeah. And I said, these guys are eating like, eat it. They're hungry. They're eating noodles, instant noodles all the time. There should be more chopsticks in here. And I said, every Asian kitchen I've been in has like brightly colored cheap-ass plastic things, like just hot pink colanders.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And I said, I think we should have that in here. This is the next day it was filled with that stuff. I mean, it was a little thing, but it was a giant triumph in my eyes. Your production team went to Dyso and like picked up as many like colanders and whatever they could find. Amazing. Diceo is one of my favorite places to shop.

So, Yoko Cano, you mentioned the music. And you mentioned temp tracks. I was going to ask you, actually, about temp tracks. What were you playing, were you playing Yoko Cano temp tracks while you were doing fight scenes and shooting stuff? Or did you not have music on set? Yeah. Alan Poppeton, our stunt coordinator, we didn't have music while we shot because we needed sound. sound production sound but that he would stage the fights so that we could see them prior to shooting

them understand so he would show they would stage it with our stunt doubles and shoot it in the in a warehouse they would use they would guys wear a blue t-shirt that said spike Team Spike. Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah. And the guy who was playing Jet would wear a blue t-shirt that's a jet on it. I think. And they would act out the fights and they would do crazy angles and they would always play the, play Yoko's music underneath so that we would.

And I think it was a reminder to them. Like, this has got, the fights have got to match the character of this music. I like that you described. the fights as not sort of putting forth a machismo vibe. There's something almost balletic about the way that Spike fights. There's a lot of elegant kicking and stuff like that. I just think that that style is really interesting. And the way in which it matches the style and the anime, which is almost impossible to do.

Right? In terms of adapting anything animated or specifically anime, there's something beautiful and artistic about anime that can sometimes be hard to translate over. And you guys aren't doing a shot for shot remake. There are several shots that are from the show. But you're not doing like a shot by shot remake. But I just thought that the fighting was a really interesting spot to pull in that exact vibe. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, I will say like that was like I sometimes struggled with, I think we talked about this a little bit too, in my performance, like, I'm a human being, so I have to play it like a human being. And he's an illustration that's playing it like an illustration. But also one thing that I look for opportunities to do is sometimes in the middle of a fight,

he seems detached, you know, that he's like almost floating above the fight and watching his body do things. Like, I don't know if that makes sense, but he's just, he's not, wrapped up in it like somebody like like his opponents are sometimes and um he's cool that way um so i think we talked about that a little bit but there were limits to that just because he had to be kicking someone or fighting someone and he's a you know flesh and blood person or i am rather do you feel

like that's connected to that sort of like that idea of memory that you talk about that sort of disassociated This is like him channeling his former life in these moments, right? Like he's channeling this sort of lethal killer that he used to be, that he's kind of trying not to be anymore, but sometimes it comes through. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And to me,

sometimes like his life on the bebop, I guess you could reverse it. It's like, was he born on the bebop or was he, is he dead and is he a zombie now, you know? It feels like Spike was born on the beb. You know what I mean?

whatever spike is. Yeah. There is one shot that I like pause and rewound when you talk about sort of the idea of you're a human flesh and blood person trying to play, not trying to play an illustration, but playing a live action version of an illustration. There was this one moment on the bebop you're talking in Jet. I could not tell you what episode it was, but you were like hanging your body. You were just like sitting and leaning and hanging your body in a way where I was like,

that's how an illustration would sit. You know what I mean? There's these like, there are these moments when you. you are trying to like, it seems like, hang your body that way in a way that like a normal human wouldn't sit, but an illustration, Mike. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sometimes. My impression I'm watching, because that was a big thing for me, because it's sort of where I began was his, his silhouettes and his, the tableaus that I found him in so much. And obviously the training. so it was like an outside in kind of approach. But when I initially watched, I was like, boy, he makes himself comfortable everywhere. And then when I got in those positions, I was like, this is really uncomfortable, actually. This is not a sustainable way of sitting.

No, it didn't look comfortable at all. It looks cool. It looks cool, but not comfortable. So that's the things we sacrificed to look cool, you know what I mean? our back health. I wanted to ask you, sort of getting into specific spoilerish territory,

I want to ask you if there was a, you know, there's several changes from the original because it would be boring to do a shot-by-shot remake of the original.

Is there a specific change that you are proudest of or happiest about that you guys made? The biggest thing would be, I delighted in

was the Julia turn. And I think that may end up being somewhat controversial. I don't know. You know, I'm an actor, and Elena is an actor, and Julia, to some extent, is an abstraction, is a memory and an idea. You know, she's very idealized. So I'm glad that there's more to play for her, for the actor. and I think that's interesting and

I hope we made the right decision because I think it's really cool but again that's informed by me going if I were cast and that I would like not want to just play the memories but to play something active

so it'll be interesting it's so funny I had a lot of thoughts and feelings about that that difference and in the end I kind of laid where you did where I was like, you know, in the original, Julia's kind of, did you, did you see Dune by any chance? I haven't seen Dune. Okay.

A criticism that some people have, I love Dune, but a criticism that some people have of that film, going and not knowing anything is they were like, Zendaya is mostly in sort of visions and dreams. And some people describe it as her being just in a perfume commercial. And I love that idea that she just like sort of shows up. She's going to be in the sequel in a bigger role, but she's just sort of like in visions and dreams. And I was like, Julia is kind of in a perfume commercial in the original. You know, she's not really, as I say, she's an abstraction. And the original kind of leans into that when she dies. She says it's all a dream, all of that sort of stuff.

But this Julia is, feels more like a person than an idealized memory of a person. And the turn, I really like the sort of you left me here and you made me this sort of all of that stuff, That was really meaty, really good. I mean, the two films, I haven't seen Doom, but the two films that come to mind right now are like Margot Roby and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. And I understand his intention too, which was she was this vision of what could have been,

the happy ending that she never got. And we're establishing, I wonder what another version would have been if we went further and deeper and more real into that. But that's his choice as a filmmaker. And also the Irishman, the women in that film. That may mean crazy. Also an interesting, like, filmmaker choice.

You go, okay, so women, it's a little bit like Diane Keaton and the Godfather. It's the idea. I mean, the film ends with the expulsion of a woman from this world, from this man's world. And so I go, okay, so you're establishing that women do not have entree into the world. and yet somehow the treatment felt wrong to me, you know? If you look at the filmography of, this is Tantagel, but I think related, like, if you look at the filmography of, like, Leonardo DiCaprio or all the Christopher Nolan films,

there is this role of, like, the ghost wife, the wife that only shows up because she has died, and, you know, the main character is remembering him. Leonardo DiCaprio has had, like, five ghost wives in his various movies. Michelle Williams, like, all these women have played the ghost wives of Leonardo DiCaprio. And these are great films that I love. But at a certain point, you know, you're like, okay, enough with it dead wives. Can we have like women who are actually active in the plot and stuff like that?

And so I do like that change for Julia in this. I agree with you. Me too. I hope the fans agree. I know that it's a big swerve. But I think the intention there was to, I mean, as with all the characters, with Eicious and Julie in particular, obviously, was to go. sort of take our shot at expanding them.

I mean, what are we here for if not taking a swing and seeing what we can do to add to it, you know? Is there other than the Julia Turn, is there a spoiler you've been dying to talk about that you have held back in interviews? No, that's the bit. I guess, oh, episode six, which is the Lombes episode, I just found that to be really,

I guess the kind of chancy storytelling that I was looking forward to us doing in Cowboy B'Bop. I was like, okay, this is, this is, it was an interesting like standalone episode. You could see it as a standalone episode, but also, but we did integrate it into the season arc, but I found it to be extremely challenging when we were scripting it and shooting it,

and hopefully it plays. But that was one of my favorites. It's always fun when you find yourself, when you're watching something, something genre. It reminded me of like, I don't know, watching an episode of Star Trek and all of a sudden you realize, like,

oh, we're doing this for this episode. Oh, fun, we're on this loop or this side path. Yeah, I really liked that. You've talked all over the place about this idea of the fact that, like, you know, Spike is supposed to be, supposed to be, quote unquote, like someone in his 20s. You're not in your 20s. But watching you, and I'm, I don't, you know, maybe I'll alienate every single anime fan when I say this, but like, watching you play this role, which is a classic noir kind of role, those aren't usually young, like young young men in those roles. Like if you're talking about someone who's carrying around heavy regrets, a lost love, like, you know, all the nostalgia for the past or trying to escape the past, all that sort of stuff, all those like Humphrey Bogart roles, etc.

Like, that's not a 25-year-old. That's someone who's like lived a life. I don't know if you have any thoughts or feelings about that. I'm with you. I, you know, I was asked to do the role. I think some people think maybe I You lobby this for myself You know

I was like I cannot engineer this This is not This is not something an actor engineer You didn't put on a Blue suit and just walk back and forth In front of Netflix offices But

But I agree with you I always think that The way this spike was written I guess there's a version in which they would have written him younger, but the spike that they wrote that our writers wrote, I felt equipped to do at this age, and there was a, the component of regret, lost love,

that was something that I feel much more intimate with now than I did when I was young. And I was like, I was a little, earlier, like, I'm sure I would have been up for the fights and the anger when I was in my 20s. That, that would have been right at the surface for me. But this, this, that tenderness and the, and hiding, covering up, regret. Also, even the idea of the bond between Jet and Spike, this kind of, you know, there's an idea of best friend, which is a childish idea, and then there's a man who saved your life, and that's an older idea, you know,

and it's a deeper kind of love. So I'm not saying that a person, a younger actor, couldn't have done all that stuff, but it does seem, I agree with you that it does seem more suited to an older person or someone who's lived longer, simply. One thing that I really love about Bebop that comes through in this show so beautifully is that idea of found family the bond between Jet and Spike, how Faye enters it,

the tease we get at the end of the season about like other potential members of the family. All of that stuff I think is core to what makes BBOB so special to people. We love a found family on a spaceship.

That's what the wood carving says. I was in the galley. Yeah. Okay, my last question for you, and thank you, thank you so much for your time is, I know you said season two is up in the air, all that sort of stuff. But what would you most want a season two of bebop to look like? Like, are you, are you like make it weirder? What would you want?

I guess, oh, well, since it's cowboy bebop, let's talk musically. I guess, you know, I'd love to go, I feel like we did verse chorus, verse chorus. let's go to the middle eight, you know, and go off the melody and see what happens. Narratively, I think it would be fun. Well, thank you, John Cho for the chat. I really, really appreciate it. It was fun. Thank you so much.

Yeah. And I will be watching your hair in a not-creep way. Thank God someone is. Thanks. All right. So that's it for us on the B-Bob. We will be back. As I mentioned, Mal and I will be back on Friday.

Talk All Things, Hawkeye. The Midnight Boys will be back on Wednesday, Talk All Things, Hawkeye. I mean, spoiler alert for Hawkeye. No spoilers, actually. I'm really into it. Mal, are you into it? Your hair?

I love it. Oh, great. So loved the first two episodes. So here we go. We're into the Hawkeyeverse starting this week and every week thereafter until it wraps up. I want to give out some thanks to our entire, of course, B-Bob crew. Pilot of the ship, the great Steve Allman, our producer.

I want to give a shout out, of course, also to Arjuna Ramjapal and TD St. Matthew Daniels for their additional production work. And the head of B-Bob Social Team, Jomi Adiron. Thank you all so much. We will see you back down on Earth in New York on Friday. Bye-bye. Aw. Pay off your home. Travel for life.

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