Short Summary
A recent so-called spiritual cult calling themselves Scratch has gain prominence across the Solar System, promising to free people from their mortal body into the spiritual beings on the net. Naturally this leads to many disapperences and a bounty being put out on the leader, Dr. Londes. The Bebop crew are forced to get involved when Faye goes missing trying to track down the doctor herself.Main Summary
A series of TV broadcasts are shown. A man called Dr. Londes promotes his movement, Scratch, which is focused on uploading human consciousness to the internet. A woman on a chat show weeps for her missing child. An advert for a brain-wave controlled videogame console. A tabloid network investigating the Scratch cult. Interviewing cult members, one of them says she joined to escape debt: It's Faye. Spike and Jet, watching the TV, spot her.Spike speaks to Scratch missionaries, feigning interest in joining their group, to see if anyone can secure him a meeting with the cult leader. No-one can: One recruiter evens says that Londes lives in Heaven. Interviewing a senile old colleague of the doctor doesn't get him anywhere either.
Faye is sneaking around the facility, revealing that she's undercover, not brainwashed. She finds a number of bodies. A TV turns on behind her, and a signal emitting from it causes her to black out.
The "Big Shot" show announces that this week's bounty is Dr. Londes, but they have no information on him whatsoever. The male host also announces that their show is being cancelled immediately due to low ratings.
Jet queues up at a toy store and buys a Brainwave games console. Taking it home and plugging in, he creates an account with a fake name while Ed attempts to hack the hardware. Jet quickly drifts out of consciousness, but a spooked Ein bites Jet to wake him up and throw off the headset. He calls Spike to warn him, but Spike has set out to infiltrate the Scratch compound.
After a second, successful attempt hacking the games console and its associated network, Ed finds that Londes' whole identity and history are fake, and all the code originates from a hospice. Jet and Ed enter the hospice in disguise, telling a sob story to get past the security guard. They find the origin is patient Rosny Spanngen, a teenage hacker who lies in a vegetative state after an accident. His mind is connected to the internet, and he created the Dr. Londes persona to trick people into killing themselves.
While this is happening, Spike finds a large room with a tower of TVs in the center, surrounded by bodies and Faye (who was put into a deep sleep). The TVs turn on and "LDr. Londes" talks to Spike. A monitor turns on in the hospice ward and he talks to Jet at the same time. Londes talks about how TV is humanity's worst invention, influencing people to the point of becoming its own religion, and leaving them unable to discern fantasy from reality. Spike feels the deadly signal begin to attack him, and he starts shooting the TVs in response. He declares "if you wanna dream, just do it by yourself." Londes then degrades and vanishes from the TV screens, pleading that this "isn't fair" and he doesn't want to disappear... Jet and Ed have disconnected Rosney's brain wave controller from the network, leaving him once more isolated within his own head.
Spike recovers, and Faye wakes up.
Jet symbolically handcuffs Rosney. Leaving the hospice, Jet laments that it was all a kid's dream. Ed looks back wistfully at the building, hoping that Rosney has sweet dreams from now on.
- And I Must Scream: Scratch turns out to be led by a teenaged hacker with a unique form of surfing-induced brain damage. His mind no longer has any connection over his body, leaving him a vegetable with a functioning mind that can only exist on the internet. In the end, Jet pulls his connection to cyberspace and traps his mind in his non-functional body, alive and on life support but unable to interact with the outside world for the rest of the 70+ years he's got left of his life.
- Big "WHAT?!": Judy's unscripted reaction to Punch's announcement.
- Brain Uploading: Subverted. Scratch is encouraging people to upload themselves to the net, but it turns out that the upload machines are completely fake and the uploadees are unknowingly just killing themselves.
- Cancellation: In-Universe. Punch, host of the Bounty Hunter Show Within a Show, "Big Shot", regretfully announces its cancellation due to low ratings. His co-host, Judy, breaks character and demands to see her agent, furious about this sudden news.
- Contemplate Our Navels: Londes' speech at the end of the episode.
- Dark Lord on Life Support: Londes is revealed to be a teenaged hacker on life support who used his connection to the internet to become digitized and create a virtual persona.
- Digitized Hacker: Londes is one, able to fabricate an identity and start a far-reaching cult designed to trick his followers into committing suicide.
- Evil-Detecting Dog: Ein bites Jet when the latter tries to hack Scratch's website and starts to go comatose.
- Freudian Excuse: Londes reveals he started the cult because he can no longer move and function in his real body and wanted everyone else to have the same (lack of) body as he does.
- Hollywood Atheist: Londes turns out to be one of these by the end.
- Machine Worship: The members of Scratch are obsessed with uploading their minds into the internet. The whole thing turns out to be a scam, and those who thought they were getting uploaded are just dead.
- The Man Behind the Curtain: Throughout the episode, it was mentioned how elusive Londes was that even the police couldn't track him down. It's eventually revealed that he doesn't exist and is just a fabrication of a paralyzed and comatose hacker whose brainwaves managed to hack the system and broadcast his messages.
- Man in the Machine: The true "Dr. Londes" is a vegetative teenage hacker who uses his life-support machines to contact the outside world.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: The Scratch is very clearly inspired by the infamous Heaven's Gate
cult, down to using similar iconography, having a similar doctrine of seeing the human body as a disposable vessel for the soul, and of course the whole suicide thing. Dr. Londes' appearance is also very clearly modelled after Marshall Applewhite, the leader of Heaven's Gate. - Obfuscating Stupidity: Judy reveals that she has been engaging in this when she breaks character.
- Old Media Are Evil: Londes tells Spike how TV has dominated humankind and how they would follow anything it tells them. Spike, however, responds with a Shut Up, Hannibal!.
- Ominous Multiple Screens: Spike never confronts Dr. Londes directly. Instead, he only manages to find a trap room full of TVs and succumbs to some kind of ultrasound attack after Londes' face on those TVs monologues at him for a bit. Luckily, Jet and Ed have already discovered where Londes is broadcasting from and manage to stop him before he can finish Spike off.
- Ominous Television: The center of the eponymous cult is a dimly lit room with a tower of stack TV sets, which show the uncanny face of the cult leader talking at whoever enters the room. Far from being a mere psychological effect, something about his dialogue also allows him to brainwash or even to kill any intruders.
- Path of Inspiration: Scratch brainwashes people into giving up their physical forms for a supposed digital existence by recording their brain waves onto the internet.
- Pretend to Be Brainwashed: Faye goes undercover to join Scratch and pretends to have been brainwashed by acting like the other cultists.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Faye almost immediately starts to run for the exit when the television sets start activating in the room full of dead bounty hunters. Too late to avoid being knocked out, but A+ for effort.
- She Cleans Up Nicely: Ed actually looks rather cute in a dress. It's the only time she wears anything outside her normal attire.
- Shoo Out the Clowns: The first in the final episodes that means things are about to get serious. Big Shot, the show the crew watch for bounty updates, winds up abruptly cancelled, while the body of Jobin, one of the Three Old Men, is among the bounty hunter corpses at the Brain Scratch cult's base.
- Straw Nihilist: Londes shows shades of this during his confrontation with Spike.
- Villainous Breakdown: As Ed cuts Londes off from the internet, he starts begging that they leave him be.
