These days it feels like being regressed to a primate could actually be a step up.
While watching a bounty at a restaurant, Spike and Jet witness an attack by the Space Warriors, an eco-terrorist group led by Twinkle Murdoch. With their initial proposed bounty killed in the attack, the pair capture Twinkle instead. Unfortunately, they find that the bounty has been cancelled under mysterious circumstances. As they make their way to Ganymede, they encounter Faye Valentine, who has been drifting through space after gambling away the money she had stolen from them in the previous episode. Also in her possession is a vial which she'd recovered from a derelict spaceship after the ship's dying pilot instructed her to take it to the ISSP.
This episode takes a much darker tone, personified by Twinkle Murdoch. This is established when she has her gang shoot up an entire restaurant just because she overheard an obnoxious customer order a dish which contained the endangered Ganymede Sea Rat (which Jet explains doesn't actually taste very nice and is only eaten as a status symbol). It's later revealed that she's developed a bio-weapon known as "Monkey Business", which causes humans to regress to apes, and is threatening to release it on Ganymede if they don't meet their demands.
This episode is genuinely tense, especially during the climax in which Twinkle launches a warhead filled with the Monkey Business towards Ganymede from hyperspace, forcing Spike to reluctantly accept Faye's help to intercept it. There's also a darkly hilarious moment in which Spike tries to open the protective casing in which the vial is carried while Twinkle looks on in horror.
Which does lead me to a minor gripe I have with the episode; when Spike and Jet release Twinkle, it's revealed at the end that Spike discreetly slipped the vial into her pocket. While this does provide a resolution, I'm just wondering what Spike was thinking at the time.
Regardless, it's only a minor issue. It's still a great episode, and one which sees Faye becoming a regular member of the Bebop's crew (much to Spike's chagrin).
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