"To life!
And being done with it!"
"BoJack Horseman" and "Mad Men" aren’t two shows you’d immediately lump together,
but if you think about it, there are some deep, fascinating parallels between their
main characters --
60s Ad Man Don Draper and former sitcom star BoJack Horseman.
Sure, Don is a suave, put-together guy from a past era who relishes his work,
while BoJack is a contemporary animated horseman
who’s far less motivated or savvy at navigating his public life.
That said, both are unhappy, womanizing alcoholics dealing with existential angst,
stuck in self-destructive cycles and profoundly dissatisfied with themselves.
“I keep going to a lot of places and ending up somewhere I've already been.”
Both live surrounded by images of beauty and bliss, which only make them depressed.
Finding two such similar protagonists with similar narrative journeys, in two very different
story worlds,
proves that we as an audience have an enduring fascination
with this type of glamorous, self-sabotaging, mysterious character.
And both teach us that building a truly satisfying existence often looks very different than
the brand of happiness we’re culturally trained to pursue.
"We need to shoot the rest of this episode!"
"I'm sorry, I-I-I just...I-I don't belong here."
"Where are you going?"
"I don't know."
"Who is Don Draper?"
"BoJack Horseman" and "Mad Men" have eerily similar opening credits.
Both underline Bojack and Don live in beautiful worlds of idealized images,
but this superficial perfection makes them feel sad and empty.
The glamorous sun and open spaces of Bojack’s Hollywoo mirror Mad Men’s picture-perfect
commercials for 60s domesticity.
But Bojack is seen drifting through his day like he’s on a moving sidewalk,
everything is happening around him; he's numb and in a state of stasis,
while Don is falling into a downward spiral, unable to catch himself.
So immediately these opening credits tell us that both shows are about the emptiness
of
chasing money, fame, consumerism and a superficial image of happiness.
"You're gonna win that Oscar, and you're gonna go up that stage, give your little speech,
and then you're gonna go home!
And you're gonna be so miserable you'll want to kill yourself -- and you're gonna have
nobody left to stop you."
Yet, even though know that Don and everyone in the show is miserable, many people fantasize
about being Don.
We want to enter and recreate "Mad Men"’s stylish world.
We as viewers are still drawn in by the costumes, evocative music, and poignant dialogue.
"That poor girl.
She doesn't know that loving you is the worst way to get to you."
And we feel more tied to the beauty of the show than to Don’s unhappiness.
Bojack is less aspirational and more relatable as a character,
"Look, for a lot of people life is just one long hard kick to the urethra."
but we’re certainly trained to idolize Bojack’s glamorous world of fame and influence.
The show’s biting satire and Bojack’s depression don’t overrule our society’s
obsession with celebrity culture.
Bojack and Don are both sex symbols.
The fact that we want to be these unhappy characters holds up a mirror to us and the
false ideals that we’re chasing.
Because of our culture’s fascination with success,
we don't see Bojack's and Don's unhappiness as a product of their success.
On some level, we imagine that we would be happy if we were in their shoes.
So we follow along as Don and Bojack struggle against nihilism
"We're just two lonely people trying to hate ourselves a little less.
Maybe that's all we're ever going to be."
and come to ask the question that we hear sung in "Mad Men"’s final season, “is
that all there is?”
Achievement, wealth and sex don’t make Don and Bojack happy.
They never feel the highs as deeply as their lows.
"Would that have made you happy?"
"For a little bit...But then probably not."
"So what does it matter?"
"But there has to be...more."
Both Don and Bojack feel resentment towards their optimistic, well-behaved counterparts.
"Everything comes so easy for you."
And the shows question whether happiness, as we tend to think of it, is even possible.
“My mother was right.
It's a mistake to be conspicuously happy.
Some people don't like it.”
“No one thinks you're happy.
They think you're foolish.”
In Don’s mind, all of advertising depends on the lie of happiness --
making people believe they can live up to an ideal that makes them feel inadequate.
“Happiness is the smell of a new car, it’s freedom from fear,
it’s a billboard on the side of the road that screams reassurance that whatever you’re
doing, it’s okay.”
Happiness, as our society sees it, is really a kind of drug based on consuming things
and getting successes that only make us want more when we realize that we’re not filled
up by these things.
“But what is happiness?
It’s a moment before you need more happiness.”
"I... want to feel good about myself... the way you do.
And I don't know how.
I don't know if I can."
Both characters find bad ways to cope -- Don ironically buys into the advertising ideals
he’s selling
and establishes a perfect suburban family, only to lead a secret second life and close
himself off to that family.
Bojack fills his void with sex, drugs, and endless relationships.
But both shows remind us that anything external --
career accomplishments, wealth, marriage, even love -- can’t fix internal feelings
of inadequacy.
First we need to figure out how to feel good about ourselves from a deeper place within.
"An Oscar won't make you happy forever, it won't solve all your problems.
You win that Oscar, the next day you go back to being you."
We take it for granted that an ideal man like Don and a big star like Bojack must be happy,
if anyone can be.
But if the rich and successful are this miserable, in a world that tells us being rich and successful
is everything,
then we have to question what contentment really is and whether we as a society have
been looking at it all wrong.
"I'm poison."
"BoJack --"
"I come from poison.
I have poison inside me.
And I destroy everything I touch."
Both Don and Bojack were raised to believe they were broken beyond repair --
"You ruined me, BoJack."
and they were taught to hate themselves just for existing.
“You're trash!
You are filth!
You know that you are!”
Their self-loathing is so toxic that the story implies it destroys people they come into
contact with,
“You’re garbage.
And you know it.”
"You are all the things that are wrong with you."
Don is inadvertently responsible for the suicides of his brother Adam, Lane Pryce,
and the accidental death of the real Donald Draper.
And Bojack’s participation in Sarah Lynn’s overdose brings him to the brink of suicide.
Both characters give into cycles of self-destruction and have a tendency to ruin even the fresh
starts they give themselves.
Both get caught in compromising situations that most people would judge pretty harshly,
yet we pity them as we see that their way of coping with pain only leads to more pain.
Neither character is willing to address the wreckage of the past, at least not for a number
of seasons.
"I have a life, and it only goes in one direction -- forward."
"BoJack, when you get sad, you run straight ahead a-and you keep running forward, no matter
what."
But the refusal to face the pain of their childhoods keeps them standing still.
This ultimately transfers the trauma of their childhood on to their adult family lives.
Don ends up being a distant father to his children even though he understands how his
own bad family situation affected him.
In "Bojack Horseman," this stubborn attempt to forget the past goes back generations.
We can even connect the dementia of Bojack’s mother Beatrice and the lobotomy of his grandmother
Honey Sugarman to
Don’s determination to ignore the past, as if he’s erasing his own memory.
And when "Bojack Horseman" lets us see Beatrice’s backstory without showing Bojack,
it parallels Don’s hiding of his life from his offspring --
when a burglar fools Don’s children by pretending to be their grandmother,
they actually buy this crazy story, because they know so little about their dad.
"She said she knew you.
I asked her everything I know and she had any answer for everything.
Then I realized I don't know anything about you."
The implication is that if younger generations were allowed to see the past fully and honestly
as we do,
they could actually heal.
"Bojack Horseman" and "Mad Men" offer us a variety of competing life philosophies,
from Mr. Peanutbutter’s cheerful spin on nihilism
“The universe is a cruel, uncaring void.
The key to being happy isn't a search for meaning.
It's to just keep yourself busy with unimportant nonsense, and eventually, you'll be dead.”
to Roger Sterling’s matter-of-fact assessment of life’s limitations.
“Look, life is supposed to be a path, and you go along and these things happen to you,
and they’re supposed to change you, change your direction.
But turns out that’s not true.
Turns out the experiences are nothing, they’re just some pennies you pick up off the floor,
you stick in your pocket, and you’re just going in a straight line to you know where.”
But ultimately we’re supposed to reject these views that don’t expect anything deeper
out of life.
We root for Don and Bojack because while they’re both deeply sad, they want to find meaning
in life and be better people.
"I know I can be selfish and narcissistic and self-destructive, but underneath all that,
deep down I'm a good person, and I need you to tell me I'm good.
Diane, help me.
Please, Diane, tell me that I'm good."
Even after so many setbacks that maybe we’ve given up on them, Don and Bojack don’t give
up on themselves.
They don't resign themselves the way that other characters do.
The visuals of Bojack struggling to go for a run, and Don struggling as he starts swimming
laps,
underline how hard it is to improve ourselves.
"Every day gets a little easier."
"Yeah?"
"But you gotta do it everyday.
That's the hard part."
Key moments for both characters come when they show selflessness, even if this might
cost them.
Both "Mad Men" and "Bojack Horseman" develop non-romantic relationships that truly matter
to us,
teaching us perhaps that we should also invest in these kinds of bonds.
At first we’d like to be like Don or Bojack because they have everything we think we’re
supposed to want.
Then we come to see our worst traits, as individuals and a society, in Don and Bojack,
alongside the great potential and desire for meaning that lies buried within these characters.
Ultimately, as Don and Bojack struggle to be better, together with them we experience
a realignment of values.
We come to understand that contentment is not a having, getting or appearing,
but doing what’s difficult and feels right.
We need to be willing to put in the work to satisfy ourselves, let go of false ideals
and be present.
There’s hope for Don and Bojack -- and therefore for us.
"It's so sad that when you see someone as they really are, it ruins them."
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