- [Helen] This video is brought to you by Raycon.
(happy music)
- What's up, everybody, Helen here.
It's a pretty good time to be an adult cartoon.
From the swear-happy South Park.
- Hey, (beep), where's my mutha (beep) money?
- [Helen] To the constant flashbacking of Family Guy
- And those guys back at the factory can suck it.
I'm gonna get outta this place one day.
- [Helen] To the liquor-fueled antics of Archer and Co.,
many animated shows for grown-ass folks
have become enduring 21st Century classics.
But we'd argue that
possibly the most adult cartoon of them all
is one, BoJack Horseman.
It's not as profane as South Park,
nor as sexually charged as Archer.
- Because I've swallowed just about as much
as I can take from you!
- Hey, phrasing!
- [Helen] But in terms of catapulting it's audience
into a befuddled cloud angsty depression,
the simultaneously hilarious
and gut-wrenching world of Hollywoo never fails to deliver.
- Look, I gotta go.
- I feel like you didn't really finish the pep talk.
- I know, but I got a movie to put together, best of luck.
- [Helen] Part of what makes BoJack so beloved
is the way it defies convention.
And not just in regards to the ethics of
inter-species romantic love.
The show features frequently depressed
and f'd up characters,
frequently doing pretty depressing and f'd up things.
Particularly in its later seasons,
the show is less about the lovable antics
of your favorite on-screen pals
than it is an emotionally-trying look
into the lives of severely flawed and unhappy people.
- Now we just have to solve the drug crisis in America.
- Easy! We'll take them all.
- Yes!
- [Helen] The most recent half-season
seems to depict an evolving version of BoJack
fighting his addictions and becoming a better horse,
along with some smaller, also promising
character arcs for his friends.
But now that the show is coming to a conclusion,
it has to wrestle with its fundamental underpinning.
Despite their many attempts,
the characters don't really change.
Understanding why the characters on BoJack are so static
requires examining the greater conversation
the show is having with a familiar form of entertainment.
The comedic sitcom.
We'll explain in this Wisecrack edition on
Change in BoJack Horseman.
Oh, and spoilers ahead for the show thus far.
But before we get into it,
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Now, back to the show.
Now, let's dive into a recap of Season 6 so far,
which finds BoJack enduring,
and even semi-thriving in rehab,
where he waters plants,
accidentally gets his sober horse-doctor drunk,
and speaks unnecessary truths
to the not-powerful recovering addicts around him.
- Really. Everyone's being honest?
Doug, over here, who keeps dressing in a suit and tie
even though he's never getting his finance job back.
(gasps)
- [Helen] Eventually forced to return to real life,
BoJack finds himself haunted
by the morally bankrupt horse he used to be.
He embarks on a cross-country trip to make amends
and figure out what to do with himself,
finally settling, it seems, on teaching acting
at the hipster-studded liberal arts college, Wesleyan,
where his half-sister, Hollyhock, is studying.
However, just when it seems like
BoJack is really becoming a better version
of that vodka-soaked, self-obsessed celebrity
we've come to know and yell at in our heads,
something else happens.
Specifically, the eponymous character doesn't appear at all
in the final episode of this half-season.
Instead, the show focuses entirely
on the victims of his toxic behavior.
From Sarah Lynn, who is super-dead
under mysterious circumstances currently being investigated
by two hard-nosed reporters,
to Gina, who still has PTSD from the time
BoJack got too into character and straight up choked her,
to Kelsey, whose career is still suffering
thanks to BoJack's antics.
- If you told me when we were starting out
that one day you'd be doing chicken commercials--
- Not a commercial.
- [Helen] Worst of all, this half of the season ends
with Hollyhock just on the precipice
of discovering a horrible truth.
- Who is he?
- [Helen] That when BoJack was in New Mexico,
he took his ex's daughter, Penny, to prom,
got her friends wasted, and almost hooked up with her.
Woof.
So, what is the series setting up for
in the final eight episodes?
And what issues should you expect the show to grapple with?
We have an idea.
But first, we have to talk about the Big Bang Theory.
It's relevant, we swear.
Now, when Greek philosopher, Heraclitus of Ephesus, said,
"Change is the only constant in life,"
he clearly couldn't have predicted the television sitcom.
The sitcom, or a typically family-friendly
comedic television show,
is fundamentally rooted in its characters.
And those characters are generally rooted in predictability.
As scholar Jason Mittell argues in his book, Complex TV,
"While it may seem that a pleasure of serial narratives
"is watching characters grow and develop over time,
"most television characters are more stable and consistent
"rather than changeable entities."
He notes that, even in the face of life-altering events,
characters are more likely to accumulate experiences
rather to actually learn and change from them,
the way your Life Coach suggests you should.
We see this all throughout the history of sitcoms.
From the self-absorbed Major Frank Burns
on the 70's show, Mash,
to the goofy antics of Kramer,
to the even goofier antics of Michael Scott.
- Hey, Michael, did you fall into a koi pond?
- Ah, I can't really hear you.
I think we have sort of a bad connection.
- [Helen] As much as we love the Sopranos and Mad Men
for their psychological complexity
and deep, ever-evolving characters,
we love plenty of shows
precisely for their lack of these qualities.
It's because Friends is not the Sopranos
that we want to watch it at 2pm when we're hungover
or 2am when we can't sleep.
- My life is an embarrassment,
I should just go live under somebody's stairs.
(laughter)
- [Helen] Minor changes might occur episode to episode
as the over-arching plots are driven forward,
the shows themselves remain fundamentally static.
Marriages, promotions and other developments
are only skin-deep.
The relationships between the central cast
don't really change, nor do the characters themselves.
This structure makes them easy to consume.
You can dip in at any point and know exactly what to expect.
But, more importantly, it blesses them with the promise that
whatever happens, everything will have gone back to normal
by the end of the episode.
- Ahhhhhh!
(laughter)
- [Helen] Comfortable, familiar, always the same.
Usually set in cozy houses, cafes or bars,
these shows keep us nestled in a comfy status quo
that makes the bitter difficulties of life feel far away,
for at least 20 minutes or so.
Imagine if Homer Simpson suddenly didn't want a bite
of that jelly-filled doughnut.
You would probably, understandably, spiral.
What makes BoJack Horseman so heart-breaking to watch
is that while the show maintains the sitcom format
by keeping its characters
on a perpetual emotional hamster wheel,
those characters actually seem to want to change.
And their inability to do so
is the crux of the show's painful resonance.
The perfect foil for the show, BoJack Horseman,
is its delightful meta show, Horsin' Around,
a series best-described by BoJack himself.
- Look, for a lot of people
life is just one lone, hard kick in the urethra.
And sometimes, when you get home from a long day
of getting kicked in the urethra,
you just wanna watch a show about good,
likable people who love each other.
Where, you know, no matter what happens,
at the end of 30 minutes, everything's gonna turn out okay.
- [Helen] Key to the turning out okay part is that,
like most sitcoms, nothing really changes.
The characters are monolithic,
simply drawn, and reliably themselves.
In this 90's comedy evocative of the Cosby Show,
BoJack played the bubbly, gold-hearted father-figure
to three adorable orphans,
reciting a cheesy platitude at the end of each episode.
- We're a family now, no matter what,
and I will always be there for you.
- [Helen] The show's sugary tone of broad humor
and familiar rhythms made BoJack rich and famous.
But, even 30 years later, he's still haunted by the question
or whether it was any good.
Still, throughout the series, BoJack has sought solace
and comfort in Horsin' Around reruns,
which he consumes with an enthusiasm he typically reserves
only for horse tranquilizers.
Reciting lines, reminiscing over bad jokes
- Nay way, Jose.
(laughs)
- Nay way, Jose.
(laughs)
- [Helen] And generally reflecting on what seems to be
the best era of his life.
He appears to long for the simple,
easy emotional connections experienced
by the horse he sees on TV, even attempting to assume
a good-natured fatherly role with Sarah Lynn
when she briefly moves in with him in Season 1,
to disastrously, metaphorically-incestuous results.
We can pretty much all relate to BoJack's sentiment.
Life would be easier if we lived on a static,
happy-family TV show
where everything is relatively predictable.
But for him, since he literally was on one,
the contrast becomes all the more heart-breaking.
Horsin' Around is often explicitly contrasted
with BoJack's real life,
and that's where things get really interesting.
Having lived the most significant years of his existence
on on a sitcom set, BoJack has come to understand
the utter vapidness of this inert sitcom world.
- The most important thing is
you gotta give the people what they want.
Even if it kills you,
even if it empties you out
until there's nothing left to empty.
- [Helen] As much as he longs to return endlessly
to the place in which nothing ever changes,
he is tormented by the fact that this is,
ironically and tragically, exactly what his life has become.
He's become a piece of (beep) who never changes.
Or, perhaps more precisely, BoJack is living
in an existentially dreadful shadow of a sitcom.
We can make out as much
from the opening credits of the show,
which, until Season 6, depict BoJack rising from his bed
in a half-drugged haze.
As he floats, a series of background images
slowly flash behind him.
The backgrounds change from season to season,
but the spaced-out, unreal quality remains,
hinting that he might continue on this carousel
until the very end.
That's what the characters in BoJack Horseman do.
They go round and round in the same interior tracks,
always ending back where they started.
Much like the characters on Full House or The Brady Bunch,
they same to be fated to never really change.
- I told you to wait in the car!
(bottle smash)
- [Helen] Despite trying really, really hard to.
The prime example is BoJack,
who in a nature befitting a suffering addict,
professes to want to transform himself and his life,
but never quite succeeds.
In the second season,
BoJack makes a conscious attempt to overhaul his personality
by plugging into a series
of chipper, metaphor-mixing self-help tapes.
They don't work because
they're attempts at instantaneous change,
only really served to tinker about
on the surface of a person.
A smile painted sloppily on the outermost layer of the self.
He takes up running as part of his self-improvement quest,
but rarely gets far.
At the end of that season's final episode,
he takes to the hill outside his home once again.
He grunts, complains and collapses almost immediately,
only to be roused by a voice above him.
- [Macaque] It gets easier.
- Huh?
- [Helen] It's the macaque who has been quietly jogging
through each episode.
- Every day it gets a little easier.
- Yeah?
- But you've gotta do it every day. That's the hard part.
But it does get easier.
- Here, the primate seems to voice
the show's perspective on change.
That it's hard and life will kick your ass
as you try to shift your ingrained behaviors,
but that even the smallest change can be super rewarding.
Lesson learned, right? Not so fast.
Season 3 returns only to watch BoJack behave selfishly,
i.e., sleeping with Todd's ex, Emily,
succumb to his addictions,
i.e., going on a pre-AA bender with Sarah Lynn,
and feel depressed and isolated,
visa vie this incredible dialogue-free underwater episode.
His inability to change is perhaps satirized in the episode,
Stop the Presses, in which BoJack has to leap through hoops
in an attempt to cancel a newspaper subscription.
As if driving home the point that, in this universe,
even the most minute, bureaucratic alteration
is impossible with a capital I-M.
But arguably, the biggest joke in quotation marks
comes at the end of the season.
BoJack attempts to commit suicide
by forcing his car to crash,
only to change his mind last-minute,
and is promptly rewarded with the majestic site
of a pack of horses running wild and free.
That's right, he's exactly where he was
at the end of Season 2, wishing he could run.
This continues for the next couple of seasons
as BoJack indulges in his vices
and hurts the people he loves,
eventually contributing to Sarah Lynn's death
in the planetarium after going
on a days' long epic bender with her.
- Right, Sarah Lynn?
Sarah Lynn?
- [Helen] After her funeral, BoJack reflects on his toxicity
and in one rather on-the-nose moment,
seems to state the show's apparent thesis.
- I don't know how to be, Diane.
Doesn't get better and it doesn't get easier.
I can't lying to myself saying that I'm gonna change,
I'm poison.
- [Helen] So much for self-improvement.
Even when you think BoJack could be getting slightly better,
say, thanks to the influence of his half-sister, Hollyhock,
he'll be back with a fifth season
centered around his new TV show, Philbert,
in which he'll completely devolve
into an opiate-fueled terror.
The other characters don't fair much better,
at least in terms of personal development.
Princess Carolyn struggles with her addiction to work,
difficulty maintaining a relationship,
and then over her desire for a child.
And then her ambivalence about having a child.
Regardless of the scenario, she both feels overwhelmed
and doesn't feel like she's doing enough.
She goes from agent to manager,
from girlfriend to single-mom,
from ruthless to empathetic,
but never really changes.
Meanwhile, Diane agonizes over her integrity.
Whether it's the societal impact of her girlcroosh videos,
or her role in enabling BoJack's bad behavior.
The sense that her work and her life
should mean more always haunts her.
She seeks to express herself creatively with integrity
in a refugee camp, or in Vietnam, or in writing a memoir.
And yet, each season,
the characters wind up pretty much back where they began.
Todd is still a man-child,
Mr. Peanutbutter still lives in mostly blissful ignorance,
and BoJack, even 30 years later,
is still the derelict horse from Horsin' Around.
(drink spilling)
- When!
- [Helen] Unlike your Cheers! or I Love Lucy's, though,
there is no comfort in this static state.
There is no peace in BoJack's tragic flaws.
Because BoJack Horseman shines a light
on the dark crevasses of humanity,
or horse-manity, that sitcoms ignore.
It's characters are simultaneously deeper and more tragic
than your typical Frasier affair.
The repetitive nature of each character's story
feels less like the fun-loving antics of All In The Family
and more like the actual living-nightmare
of a human being trying to change in real life.
- That's too much, man!
(laughter)
- The unchanging nature of things in Hollywoo
becomes a torturous existential trap,
a bitter and continual reminder of the fact that
real life is kina the same.
No matter what happens today,
you'll wake up the same person tomorrow.
No promotion, no marriage, no big symbolic change
will take you away from who you are.
So, BoJack's effectively stuck, right?
Not quite.
The show isn't simply content to teach us
that people can't change no matter how hard they try,
Season 6 thus far feels more devastating than that.
Rather than dark sitcom-like repetition,
the eight episodes witness BoJack
actually seeming to evolve in a meaningful way,
albeit slowly and painfully.
Still imperfect, he enables teenage rehab resident Jameson
to behave badly and act out, much as he did with Sarah Lynn.
But, even when he messes up, he's trying.
Yes, he keeps vodka around because he thinks he's special
and can withstand his addiction.
And yes, that vodka accidentally gets doctor horse drunk.
But he stays with said horse doctor
and repeatedly tries to get him back on the wagon.
You know, progress.
Plus, he urges Diane to get on meds,
tries to find Todd an asexual partner,
and he even brings Princess Carolyn's baby a present.
Though, it naturally is a portrait of himself
as a narcissist.
Hell, he even gives Mr. Peanutbutter a crossover episode.
And by the end of the eight episode,
other characters seem to be making small changes, too.
Diane goes on antidepressants,
Princess Carolyn seems to reset her priorities,
Todd realizes his perpetual childlike nature
makes him an excellent manny,
and Mr. Peanutbutter attempts to atone for his infidelity.
These changes are small, maybe even microscopic,
but they're there.
Every inch of change has been hard-won.
Is something meaningful happening? Maybe.
And it feels most profound in episode 7,
when BoJack travels the country visiting some of the people
he's hurt or alienated.
He apologizes, tries to make things right,
and genuinely seems to atone for who he is.
He appears to ditch
some of the superficial trappings of his persona,
allowing his hair to gray as he reconciles
with his former hairdresser
who he got fired from Horsin' Around.
He even tries to get over
his life-long aversion to other horses.
And then, episode 8.
Episode 8 is so depressing
because it reminds us of the BoJack we used to know.
Before the extensive horse therapy and the apologies.
Before the even vague sense of decency
or the desire to be a role model for Hollyhock.
We're forced to remember every mistake he made
and the long list of victims left in the wake
of his pathological selfishness.
And we're left wondering
will the changes BoJack has made even matter?
Is there a point in your life when you've hurt enough people
that your own personal evolution becomes irrelevant?
BoJack's journey has been one of the most emotional
of any animated TV protagonist.
And yet, it's paved entirely with the hurt
and damaged souls, mostly women, he's injured along the way.
While the show may be indicating
that BoJack has finally changed,
it also suggests that he may have caused more damage
than even the most throughout evolution could excuse.
So, what does it all mean?
Well, we think that the writers of BoJack Horseman
have always situated Horsin' Around
as the imperfect mirror image
to the actual show they're creating.
Horsin' Around may be comforting in its platitudes,
but it's also disingenuous.
Nobody gets horribly hurt,
and nobody's particularly deep or honest.
On BoJack, it's the opposite.
Everybody is hurting, often horribly.
And the characters are often deep
and quite honest about their pain.
- [Hollyhock] But it wasn't all bad.
I mean, yeah I got secretly drugged for months on end
to the point where I was living a nightmare
in which I couldn't recognize my own body
or understand what was happening to my brain, but
other than that it was a pretty chill experience.
- I should've protected you.
I really wanted to be a good day to you, Hollyhock.
- Well, turns out your not my dad at all.
- Yeah, good thing, I guess.
- [Helen] The stasis that makes shows
like Hosin' Around comforting makes BoJack brilliant,
and sometimes borderline intolerable to watch.
And we have literally no idea what's gonna happen next.
Sorry.
But, what do you guys think?
Is BoJack beyond redemption?
Is changing oneself essentially impossible?
And if so, should any of us really bother to be better?
Let us know what you think in the comments.
Thanks to all our dope patrons
for supporting our channel and podcast.
Pretty please hit that Subscribe button, and before you go,
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And that's all I got.
Thanks for watching guys.
Peace.
(upbeat music)