BoJack Horseman is not your usual adult-oriented animation series. Usually with this genre - The Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park, Rick and Morty - the emphasis is on comedy. And seeing BoJack Horseman for the first time (especially if you start with the first series), it seems on the surface to be very similar (although it has the best opening credits out of any of them...).
The premise certainly seems to superficially setting the viewer up for lols galore - in a world populated with regular people and animal people, a washed star of an awful but successful sitcom from the 90s gets drunk a lot and behaves badly. About halfway through Season 1 though, it became clear that this was a cover story for being all that and an examination of depression in the deeply shallow world of Hollywoo. The animal/people bit seems to to be a gimmick but after a few episodes it seems natural for a biped mansize dog with sunglasses to be marrying a normal human woman.
BoJack Horseman is a complex character, a nice way of saying he is a complete mess. In Season 4 - on Netflix since last Friday - he claims he is poison, that everyone he gets close to he destroys, and there’s plenty of evidence to support his case. Season 3 ended with his young co-star from the 90s dying after going on a massive drugs binge with him, and BoJack nearly committing suicide. But right from the first season the show has introduced elements that give context to his self-destructive nature: his love-deprived background, his feelings that he has wasted his talents on something superficial and worthless, his borderline alcohol and drug addictions - and plenty more.
The theme of Season 4 is parenthood. It’s an attempt to do more of a deep dive on why BoJack is who he is, how his current character was formed. A young horse girl, Hollyhock, turns up on his doorstep to find out if he’s her real father. At the same time, he finds out that his hated mother has dementia and he grudgingly takes her in - for a while. With flashbacks we find out his grandparents’ and parents’ backstories, and the ghosts of the past (such as BoJack’s lobotomized grandmother) haunt the ghosts of the present (represented by his depression and his mother’s dementia). Continuing the parenting theme, there’s the plot where Princess Carolyn is trying for a baby and miscarries, resulting in the break up with her boyfriend.
All of this would make the show remorselessly bleak which is why there are the more traditionally comedic subplots - Mr Peanutbutter running for Governor and Todd’s Clown/Dentist business are the ones that stand out, although if the Governor race is meant to satirize Trump it’s pretty toothless. The fact that most of the comedy is in the subplots is enough indication of the road the series has chosen to go down by now, and it feels less and less essential to me as the drama intensifies, but maybe I just like the darker stuff… For me that’s where the humour lies. My favourite ‘joke’ of the season comes at 1:45 of the below clip, and is a lot funnier and truthful than the ‘idiot becomes politician’ jokes.
The middle-ground between jolly and fucking depressing is probably the sweet plot of Todd realising he is asexual and coming to terms with that. It's not a subject I know anything about and I think it is the first time I've ever seen it being dealt with anywhere, ever. So kudos for that in itself. The comic relief idiot character (Father Dougal in Father Ted is probably the best example) is usually an asexual. But the character actually becoming self-aware and seeking a support group to understand it? That never happens.
It’s quite ambitious to try to tackle all these themes and plots in one series though and although it does a very good job on it, there’s definitely some creaky structuring - after one episode covering BoJack’s guilt over Sara Lynn’s death, it’s pretty much forgotten about and the series moves on from it too quickly considering it’s essentially the cliffhanger resolution to the last Season (although in its defence that episode covers a year of BoJack’s life). And I really don’t understand why Princess Carolyn and Ralph split up - it seemed very rushed and the plot just peters out, begging to be resolved properly. And the whole campaign trail for Mr Peanutbutter just faded to nothing as well. It did sometimes seem like the writers put so much into Bojack’s story they ran out of things to do with the others by the final 2 or 3 episodes.
It’s quite ambitious to try to tackle all these themes and plots in one series though and although it does a very good job on it, there’s definitely some creaky structuring - after one episode covering BoJack’s guilt over Sara Lynn’s death, it’s pretty much forgotten about and the series moves on from it too quickly considering it’s essentially the cliffhanger resolution to the last Season (although in its defence that episode covers a year of BoJack’s life). And I really don’t understand why Princess Carolyn and Ralph split up - it seemed very rushed and the plot just peters out, begging to be resolved properly. And the whole campaign trail for Mr Peanutbutter just faded to nothing as well. It did sometimes seem like the writers put so much into Bojack’s story they ran out of things to do with the others by the final 2 or 3 episodes.
Generally it’s a success though. A real highlight is the episode ‘Time’s Arrow’, dealing with the story of BoJack’s parents getting together. It’s viewed through the filter of his mother’s dementia, technically making it an unreliable narrative, but it’s pretty convincing and manages to make us feel sorry for Bea while at the same time not hating BoJack for his treatment of her.
And the big surprise of the series is that it actually ends in a really nice way - BoJack realises has some family he actually likes and has feelings for. If the concept of the show is that things have to get worse for him before they get better, could Season 5 actually be where things start going right for BoJack? Guess we won’t find out until next year...
BoJack Horseman Season 4 is out on Netflix now
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