Netflix has a pattern. They have stats from a lot of multi-season shows and know that there's a sharp drop off in viewers the more seasons a show runs for, even if they're all excellent. This makes the first season a great investment, but remaining seasons are subject to rapidly diminishing returns.

So, their solution is to put a lot of effort into season 1 and, if it does really well, put vastly diminished resources into season 2. If season 1 doesn't blow their metrics out the window, they just cancel it. Since season 2's produced under this approach are usually pretty rough (e.g. Altered Carbon), there are almost never season 3's. There are exceptions (e.g. Stranger Things), but there are an awful lot of Netflix shows that never get a second season despite a very respectable first season (e.g. Marco Polo).

The anime version of Cowboy Bebop is a classic. In general, it's hard to remake a classic and leave fans of the classic happy. When the first shots of the costumes and cast came out I almost completely dismissed the Netfix series. Harold from Harold&Kumar is Spike? Jet looked like a janitor. The hype wasn't there for me.

So, I delayed watching the series, heard the grumblings, and went in with low expectations.

This is not Netflix's A-game. They did a great job in some respects, but really cheaped out in others.

The casting is a mixed bag, but mostly good. John Cho is actually pretty good as spike and Mustafa Shakir is brilliant as Jet. Pineda's Faye Valentine was less good. While Spike and Jet still felt at least somewhat like the anime characters, Valentine in the Netflix series was just off, and far too comical. Ed shows up only in the last episode and, well... Yeah. Let's face it, Ed is a difficult role and has to be played by someone fairly young. If I were directing a series like this I'd definitely want to shoot several episodes from later in the series with Ed before shooting the introduction precisely because of how hard it is to jump into the roll. The actor who played Ed was set up to fail.

The effects are good and the Bebop plus Swordfish are very well realized. The action is fairly well choreographed. The sets outside the ship are where Netflix got cheap. The rewrote things to reuse several locations a lot, such as the bar. The same junkyard set stands in for an assortment of locations and seems to pop up every episode, minimally redressed and shot from different angles.

The writing is where Netflix deviated from the anime most substantially. The plots of some episodes are almost totally unrecognizable, and generally do not compare well to the anime. The writers chose to flesh out and make explicit more of the syndicate backstory, with far more of Spike, Viscious, and Julia's past shown. The show becomes more interesting because of this. If they'd done a more faithful remake there'd have been less reason to watch the show. I'd have preferred that Ein's treatment was just a little more faithful though. Poor dog got screwed.

If you're a fan of the anime, lower your expectations, expect something a little different, and you may enjoy the Netflix series. I'd watch Season 2 even knowing it would be one of Netflix's usual half-efforts with a greatly reduced budget. It's not the anime but, if you like the genre, it's worth watching.