Cowboy Bebop‘s diner clip gets a little more tolerable when mashed up with Seinfeld
A scene from the live-action Cowboy Bebop has been given the Seinfeld treatment
TV Features Cowboy Bebop
On Friday, Netflix released the first season of its live-action Cowboy Bebop series. It is, on the whole, not a very good adaptation. There are a lot of reasons that the jump from animation to live action doesn’t quite work, but the show’s sense of humor—illustrated best in a diner scene used as a promo clip last week—is among the most glaring.
Fortunately, that scene plays a lot better now that Cowboy Bebop has been given the same treatment that every TV show and movie eventually must and found itself mashed up with Seinfeld.
Seinfeld Bebop, put together by a Vimeo user with the handle Smelford Dip, sees Bebop’s Spike and Jet sit together at a diner following a slap bass intro, lines about “fake cheesy bread” and bidet misuse punctuated by a laugh track. Faye runs in to tell a story about eco-terrorists that actually works pretty well as a third Seinfeld character’s introduction to a scene. The “that’s nutbags” line, which sticks out unpleasantly from the whole thing, is turned into a Netflix logo at the end.
The scene isn’t any funnier—or fitting with Cowboy Bebop’s characters as they were originally written—this way, but it does at least play better as a bad sitcom. (It also makes us wonder how Seinfeld’s cast matches up with Bebop’s, given that Jet is obviously George here and Spike is given the Jerry role. Is Faye more Kramer or Elaine?)
Now, we’d like a reverse mash-up where George, Elaine, Jerry, and Kramer’s lives are scored by Yoko Kanno’s mournful blues and upbeat jazz compositions. The internet can obviously make this happen and, if we want to wring whatever enjoyment we can from this crossover, it absolutely must.
[via Digg]
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35 Comments
That’s some quality shitposting.
Let’s say as of 2021, Reid McCarter is 35. That would mean he was bornt in 1986. Seinfeld came out in 1989 when he was 3. By the time Seinfeld went off air, he would have been 12 years old. Now tell me how Reid McCarter (Who looks more to be 28-32 the most) has nostalgia about a damn show no 12yr old kid was watching?
I’m 35, was born in 1986, and saw quite a bit of the show while it was on, and ESPECIALLY in the decades after while it was ubiquitous in syndication. I love that show, even own the complete series box set on DVD. It’s probably hard to grasp now that pop culture is more ephemeral and being constantly rebooted, but things like this used to permeate pop culture long past their initial runs, and Seinfeld in particular was a phenomenon.
LOL! Trying to pretend to have nostalgia for something he probably didn’t even understand let alone watch, then have the gaul to say a show he probably started watching in his late 20’s makes a show that just started better is petty. His fake nostalgia makes his point weak. It’s all good though. Not like he’s a real critic. It’s a blog.
They’re called reruns. It’s how I watched Star Trek and The Twilight Zone despite not being alive when they first aired.
His fake nostalgia is lame is all. “This is betta than this! Hur hur!”
Why does it have to be fake though? I was watching M*A*S*H when I was as young as eleven. A twelve year old watching Seinfeld seems like an easier get next to that.
The live action absolutely could not nail down the correct tone to be a good Bebop successor… but wow, this really is a dead ringer for a Seinfeld scene.
The original Cowboy Bebop is a top-five anime for me, and I have really few problems with the live-action Netflix version. It’s not perfect, it’s not the same, but it’s a really fun show with a lot to like.
I agree. It’s one of my favorite animes and I really enjoyed the Netflix show. Of course it’s not the same as the cartoon. If it were, there’d be no point to it. I hope that hating it doesn’t become such a meme that we never see a second season.
I love it but then again, I also love the live action Speed Racer. The difference here is that Cowboy Bebop is a classic to me and I really don’t like animated Speed Racer. Bebop is like a Remix that I still enjoy very much.
Yeah they remixed it, but for some reason fans were screaming that the trailers were all the same so why not watch the anime…then they did changes and they scream why did you change it…they scream why didnt you include ed in the trailers then they scream that ed is cringy (they were in the show if you take it seriously) overall they did their best and were gonna lose the entire time. Im guessing netflix will slash the budget for a second season and at best we will get one more to wrap it all up, sad cause im guessing all the special effects and sets are made and the newer season can really go wild now that it cut lose from expectations to faithfully follow ever fan’s wet dream of shot for shot viewing.
Easiest way to help push the agenda to people who werent gonna watch cause nostalgic glasses about their first few anime being untouchable (dbz, pokemon, yugioh, sailor moon, or whatever toonami showed 90s kids). Cowboy bebop was goofy at time…there i said it. This whole take that everyone hates the live action is horribly skewed, given most reviews are from fans of the original that wanted fye in some skimpy outfit doing flips that would look stupid and uncomfortable. NO or almost no joke will be that funny out of context and completely shown so you dont laugh. Remember that joke in avengers. Were friends from work…audience laughing…you reading this…not so much…guess what jokes need, buildup, context, the person listening to be engaged on their own, a liking of the person saying the joke somewhat and not complete distain. I hate how people will watch this and keep pushing that we dont need live action adaptations, not all people wanna watch a 1000 episode long anime (preparing myself for the backlash one piece live action will get if cowboy bebop was considered eye burningly bad), some find cartoons unappealing but would enjoy the story the cartoon presents. My grandpa will never like cartoons, just not his thing…hell watch and enjoy live action. Let him have it. Its akin the the books are better people and its annoying.
Yeah, people really wanna tear it down for some reason. If this came out in the 90s or 00s when i was a kid…id eat it up. Not saying its old looking in fact its cool, just saying people are acting like tv is getting worst but im getting movie budget stories on tv now and its great. The sets, locations, plots, camera work, fights, worldbuilding, all hard to do years ago. Im guessing lord of the rings will get the same treatment…just watch the movie etc. One piece is another that will be so hated given the amount of one piece fans and them not noticing how silly one piece is, its never been this gritty nightmare fuel show, and will need to come off more pirates of the Caribbean less idk blade runner serious as im hearing fans want (well fans dont want it but they dont like anything). Plus by the time the netflix one piece arrives im guessing one piece (the treasure) will be revealed, causing fans to spoil it for live action only watchers or something, leading to the ending being changed and fans mad cause their head cannon changed etc. Fans…i dislike em. XD.
Not having to suffer the horror of being “a fan” of the anime, I went into this with zero expectations and found the bar pleasantly cleared.
Agree.
Yeah, Twitter came in hot looking for their next Two Minutes Hate, but this show is actually pretty fun if you take it on its own merits. The stuff that’s not working for me is the same stuff that didn’t work in the anime (namely, the whole Vicious plot).
One thing I find really annoying about The AV Club and its sister sites is how they’re clearly being called upon to self-reference as much prior content as they possibly can, like how this article links back to four of the previous articles written about Cowboy Bebop and seven articles about Seinfeld. Naturally, that results in an extremely lazy and predictable writing style, made even worse when they steal the jokes from the twitter threads that they find half their content on to begin with.
This is, on the whole, not a very good adaptation of the old AV Club.
It’s because a thoroughly beloved anime has just been turned into a total turkey. What a turd. I didn’t think anything could top a lazy dub, but it’s even worse. It’s like an amateur table read, in the basement of a 3rd tier anime convention in Boise. This needs more coverage, frankly. It reminds me of finding other shitty live-action ports on streaming, watching it for 5 minutes, and saying “huh, no wonder I didn’t hear about this. It gargles balls”.
avclub was NEVER good
The AV Club tends to revel in a weighted nostalgia blanket of the past littered with links that users never asked for. While the fan service may delight a few diehard Gawker fans, others find this approach nearly as tedious as the full-size videos that block the page.
Grade: C-
“self-reference as much prior content as they possibly can”Any website with a degree of common sense does this and has done this for decades. Page views pay the rent.
Ah yes, nostalgia trumps enjoyment of the moment every time.
Now that I know who Jerry, George, and Elaine are on this show the big Kramer reveal isn’t such a surprise.
I found the live action Cowboy Bebop is perfectly cromulent and entertaining. Hating it simply because hardcore anime nerds like to shit on everything doesn’t make you as cool as you think it does.
So, Cowboy Bebop SHOULD adhere to its predecessor, whereas Ghostbusters: Afterlife leans too hard on what came before? Trying to keep up with these complicated rules. In any case, I thought this scene was pretty funny, even better with the laugh track and Seinfeld beats.
There’s nothing wrong with a kids’ adventure movie. It’s even kind of sweet to see Ghostbusters re-contextualized as, well, a bunch of kids playing Ghostbusters.
It’s also notable that Reitman has made a movie that looks and feels
different from any previous iteration of the series, with magic-hour
location shooting and a few neat images—the Ghostbusters’ rickety old
car sailing through a cornfield—that Reitman supposedly had rattling
around in his head for some years before he figured out what to do with
them.https://www.avclub.com/ghostbusters-afterlife-is-a-dispiriting-nostalgia-exer-1847831687So you wanted to get mad about a review but did not bother to read it?
Thinking of the general line of thought, not A.V. Club specifically.
That’s even worse.
You know, it doesn’t matter.
stuff should be good and not shitty
Reid, I’m an Anime Fan and loved Cowboy BeBop (Ghost in the Shell, etc.). And to me, honestly, the live version is pretty good based on live actor limitations. Have you actually watched either version? Critique does not mean being negative just to say you are “critiquing”.
Easiest way to help push the agenda to people who werent gonna watch cause nostalgic glasses about their first few anime being untouchable (dbz, pokemon, yugioh, sailor moon, or whatever toonami showed 90s kids). Cowboy bebop was goofy at time…there i said it. This whole take that everyone hates the live action is horribly skewed, given most reviews are from fans of the original that wanted fye in some skimpy outfit doing flips that would look stupid and uncomfortable. NO or almost no joke will be that funny out of context and completely shown so you dont laugh. Remember that joke in avengers. Were friends from work…audience laughing…you reading this…not so much…guess what jokes need, buildup, context, the person listening to be engaged on their own, a liking of the person saying the joke somewhat and not complete distain. I hate how people will watch this and keep pushing that we dont need live action adaptations, not all people wanna watch a 1000 episode long anime (preparing myself for the backlash one piece live action will get if cowboy bebop was considered eye burningly bad), some find cartoons unappealing but would enjoy the story the cartoon presents. My grandpa will never like cartoons, just not his thing…hell watch and enjoy live action. Let him have it. Its akin the the books are better people and its annoying.
Easiest way to help push the agenda to people who werent gonna watch cause nostalgic glasses about their first few anime being untouchable (dbz, pokemon, yugioh, sailor moon, or whatever toonami showed 90s kids). Cowboy bebop was goofy at time…there i said it. This whole take that everyone hates the live action is horribly skewed, given most reviews are from fans of the original that wanted fye in some skimpy outfit doing flips that would look stupid and uncomfortable. NO or almost no joke will be that funny out of context and completely shown so you dont laugh. Remember that joke in avengers. Were friends from work…audience laughing…you reading this…not so much…guess what jokes need, buildup, context, the person listening to be engaged on their own, a liking of the person saying the joke somewhat and not complete distain. I hate how people will watch this and keep pushing that we dont need live action adaptations, not all people wanna watch a 1000 episode long anime (preparing myself for the backlash one piece live action will get if cowboy bebop was considered eye burningly bad), some find cartoons unappealing but would enjoy the story the cartoon presents. My grandpa will never like cartoons, just not his thing…hell watch and enjoy live action. Let him have it. Its akin the the books are better people and its annoying.
Half the commenters here: I hate the AVClub and have some personal insults for the writers. I will be back every other article for the next five years to elaborate on this point.