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The story is set in a space western setting - Spike and Jet, who own a ship called the Bebop. They travel the Solar system as bounty hunters, chasing wanted criminals to earn money. Along the way, they also pick up two women; the debt-laden Faye Valentine and the playful kid and computer genius Edward. Also a genius dog named ein.
Anway I am not a huge fan of the mosnter of the week formula, I prefer a stories to follow certain arcs, however not every episode in this story is a monster of the week. Those episodes are always good regardless, the reason why ... I'm giving cowboy bebop an 8 is because its inconsistent. Some episodes like the last two episodes are ten out of ten, some are 7 outs of ten. the episodes focusing on the past of the main characters are good and a few individuals one-off episodes, but for me it isn't consistent enough to earn a ten.
Now let us talk about the characters
Bebop has a theme about the past and how you can't run away from it. All the characters in the ENTIRE SHOW are effected by the past. This includes the bounties they chase , who are running from the crimes they committed whether they did it for good reasons or bad.

Spike: Most obvious. He's running from his time with Vicious and the Red Dragons. He had to fake his death to escape his past, and his arc ends "positively" with him accepting his past and accepting death. I felt like I was watching a dream i never wake up from, before i knew it the dream was all over" is a telling line of his. Yeah, basically one of the themes of the show, that he even talks about with Faye, is that it's useless to hold onto the past. You should let it go and live in the moment, freely.

Of course, he never lived by this advice himself. He's shown to constantly be held by the past and an inability to let go of Julia. He consistently takes off from the Bebop to go drink and think about things and lives in a state of lethargy because of his perceived loss. He finds Julia at the end of the series and when she's killed, he decides to spare the Bebop crew anymore attacks from the Red Dragon by confronting Vicious directly... He also does this to avenge Julia and bring an end to the cycle of living in the past and present at once.

Faye: Second most obvious. Her past is completely erased from her memory and she spends most of her time on Bebop trying to suppress her sadness with it by going to dog/horse races and drinking. When the VHS tape comes to her near the end of the show, she starts remembering more and more, until she finds her family home has been torn down and she has no memory of it outside of the video tape. Her arc ends negatively, accepting that she'll never have those memories back.

Jet: Least obvious. Jets glory days are behind him, and he left behind a successful job as a police officer (after being set up for a fall by his partner) and the love of his life who left him because she felt too dependent on him. He never had the family he wanted so he tries very hard to make a family out of the Bebop crew. He loves Ed, thinks of Spike as his brother, he is the only member outside of Ed that interacts regularly with Ein, and at least tolerates Faye. Jet's arc is a lot less dynamic than Spike and Faye, probably because he's supposed to be the moral center that drives Spike's story, but he's an old man past his prime.
Ed is a lot less dynamic that Spike and Faye for obvious reasons, but Ed's father was never very attentive to Ed and left Ed in an orphanage because he couldn't keep them around while working his intense job as an Earth cartographer. The Bebop crew, Jet excluded, doesn't care for Ed and disregards them often.

Ed's past is about rejection, and Ed seems (I say seems because Ed never speaks clearly about themselves in the show lol) to come to the acceptance that they like being alone, and the family they made on Bebop isn't what they need. Ein comes along of course because they are best friends (And because Watanabe needed to jettison Ed and Ein before the climax) but Ed finds solace in being alone. Ed's arc ends in their last episode when they write Goodbye across the bow and venture across Earth finding new weird shit to do.
Vicious: It sounded like Vicious wanted Spike to come back to the syndicate, perhaps be partners once more during their confrontation at the church.

Just before spike was pushed out the stained glass window, Vicious was furious when spike told him that he put past behind him.

Perhaps Vicious was planning on having spike be a part of syndicate once he succeeded with the coup. Then again he did kill Mao. Everyone was waiting for Spike to return, perhaps Vicious wasn't an exemption.

The whole scene is great from start to finish. It's the first time they've seen each other in years, since Spike left and had his near brush with death. We can only speculate what their relationship was like before everything but with the brief flashbacks during Spike's fall they appeared to be very close friends. They most likely had very similar childhoods (lack of parents being around/never there to begin with) poor struggling to survive on the streets of Mars. Then Mao comes along and sees their potential in the syndicate and takes them under his wing, becoming the closest thing they've had to a father/family. From then until Spike leaves they were probably constantly working together(definitely some friendly rivalry trying to one up each other) becoming like brothers, the first time I watched that scene when Vicious talks about them sharing the same blood I thought they were actually brothers. Now I realize he meant it symbolically. I think Vicious feels betrayed by Spike and I agree I think Vicious wanted him to come back and be his number 2. Then again Vicious may have wanted to just kill him to eliminate the threat. Little is known about Spike's past and even less of Vicious's so its hard to say...