We all have have this little candle burning inside of us, hoping to grow bigger, wanting
to become this raging fire that we count on to keep us warm.
To give us hope.
To light our way.
It grows when we are happy.
It diminishes when we fuck up.
But no one ever tells the story of what happens when that light goes out.
When there’s nothing to illuminate our way but our own narcissism plagued by insecurity
and depression.
We want to be happy.
We want to forget all our problems and live life to the fullest, but we can’t.
Our road is some tangled web of lies we tell ourselves over and over until we believe it
just so we can sell the movie rights to the people around us, tricking them to think its
the best film of all time.
This is the story of that light, the light that eventually goes out for all of us at
some point or another.
This is the story of Bojack Horseman, the story, you never knew.
The first time we meet Bojack he’s doing an interview on live TV while cursing and
admitting to parking in a handicapped space.
It's obvious he's an asshole; He’s a drunken dickbag who’s accomplished all of nothing
in the last 18 years since his primetime sitcom, “Horsin’ Around” finally hoofed it.
Get it?
Hoofed?
Because horses run on hooves?
And he is a horse?
Do you get it?
Do you get my joke about the hoof?
“There’s a whole page of this...”
Bojack is only able to fund his lavish, hedonistic lifestyle by his success in his saccharine
(and not good) 90's sitcom.
At the show's outset Bojack exists to relive the glory days that made him rich and c-list
famous in the 90's-2000's, while simultaneously accusing the show of 'stealing' his 20's and
30's.
His days are spent rewatching the boxed-set DVDs of Horsin' Around he carries with him
everywhere.
He's consumed with the fear that his only career legacy- made solely as a half-hour
of cheap feelings and filler to sell as many ads as possible- will define him as an actor
and celebrity for the rest of his life.
Hah, he should’ve been a YouTuber.
Would’ve fit right in.
Bojack's desperate need for admiration yields the nuanced portrait presented in his best-selling
tell-all biography, One Trick Pony- ghostwritten by his best friend Diane.
He's thrilled with the publicity and praise heaped on him as a result of the book's success-
so much so that he never addresses the abuse and tantrums he piles on Diane when he first
realizes his portrayal is unflattering.
Once Bojack realizes the book is a hit, he's so happy that he quickly becomes caught up
in his own new hype.
Bojack segues that hype into a serious acting career, drumming up enough support to film-adapt
Secretariat, his dream movie.
His success has him embracing change and becoming a better person - which for Bojack means forced
superficial positivity and an even greater level of self-absorption.
He stays with this new positivity until his own mother reminds him that he is still the
same depressed, broken person he always was.
As much as he wants to forget his bad traits and forge another identity, his old habits
and patterns hold him in check.
It is only himself who is ultimately holding him accountable.
What follows is a long, desperate struggle of Bojack against himself.
With his fame secure, Bojack turns to finding lasting happiness.
He abandons his dream role and instead fucks off to New Mexico to visit a married old flame,
taking advantage of her family’s generosity for two months.
When things go wrong, Bojack brokers a semi-truck to tow his newly bought “Escape From L.A”
back to his abandoned cliffside home - after nearly destroying a happy family.
Bojack returns to Hollywoo assuming life there froze during his absence, only to learn the
world doesn’t solely revolve around his dick.
Secretariat is wrapped up and packaged for theatres, a finished product that only needs
Bojack to shill for the premiere.
His part has been completely replaced with a 3D render.
Bojack is briefly thrilled when gets nominated for an Oscar, but his nomination is revealed
as a hoax.
He spirals back into depression and begins a heavily-alcoholic, ever-lengthening drug-induced
bender with Sarah Lynn, his Horsin’ Around TV daughter.
Their entire two week escapade ends at a planetarium where Bojack finally understands in the moment
what he cares about: This moment.
Right now.
Bojack sobers up after, more jaded and uninterested in life than ever.
His crushing depression entirely eclipses his career reaching a new peak.
Horsin’ Around no longer defines him.
His 20’s no longer define him...
Yet nothing has changed.
He abandons his entire life yet again to hide out in Michigan, spending over a year there
in near-solitude before returning to Hollywoo.
Back in LA, Bojack is immediately introduced to Hollyhock as his biological daughter.
With a real father-daughter bond forming in his life, Bojack once again has purpose.
When Hollyhock pushes Bojack to reinvolve his dementia-ridden mother in their lives,
He paws his mom off on a live-in beartaker, only agreeing to allow her to stay in his
home because Hollyhock insists on it.
As ‘thanks’ Bojack's mother drugs Hollyhock over the course of months until she overdoses,
destroying the father-daughter bond Bojack so desperately wanted.
The only saving grace is that Bojack was not her father, but her brother, allowing some
form of a shaky relationship to persist.
This brings us to the newly-released season 5, which boasts a crowning departure from
all formats associated with any comedic animated adult cartoon before it.
The stand-out episode of season 5 is a eulogy given by Bojack at his mother’s funeral:
For 22 minutes Bojack speaks alone at a podium.
There are no cuts to other characters.
There are only a few, bitter gags.
We see for the first time the fully unrestrained depth of longing and the scars of old trauma
Bojack still carries with him even as an aging adult.
He is no longer a child terrified of his parents, and he uses the power that the independence
and autonomy of adulthood has given him for harsh final gestures.
He mocks his mother’s death-rigor, exploiting her final expression of pain and suffering
for an attempt at audience laughs.
His father spent years writing a ‘great American Novel’- one that, Bojack tells
the audience with relish, he has never read.
“Because why would I give him that?”
His mother’s final wish was an open casket funeral, so Bojack keeps the coffin closed.
His eulogy is harsh and cutting, giving the impression that he holds even being present
at the funeral in contempt.
For Bojack, this eulogy is mostly a way to tear apart a cruel mother who no longer has
any way to fight back.
Yet he admits to lying after a story he tells about her giving him a gift as a child, altering
the tale to make her appear more loving.
In another story he speaks in hushed, reverent tones about her dinner parties, how his mother
would shed her caustic personality for a fragile few moments, a temporary ceasefire in his
life.
At the end of his speech, he echoes his mother’s own eulogy for the death of his father: “My
mother is dead, and everything is worse now.”
The rest of Season 5 portrays Bojack in the midst of change.
For perhaps the first time in his life, Bojack sets his own needs aside and does something
for another person purely out of goodwill: he stars in a show he has no interest in just
to preserve the career and integrity of a friend.
Bojack, despite his deep apathy, actually gives great performances on his new show.
He befriends and bebeds his Co-star, eventually turning their strictly friends-with-benefits
arrangement into a caring relationship.
When an antisemetic, sweede-hating, pedophile, daughter-hating, Alaskan-Native-slurring,
Madrid-train-bombing-apologist accused of multiple counts of sexual assault is cast
as his sidekick, Bojack becomes a reluctant, bumbling feminist in a well-meaning attempt
to be an ally and condemn bad behavior by powerful men.
It takes multiple interviews detailing the dickbag’s past, but eventually his terrible
co-star is replaced.
Production of the show continues as Bojack’s self-centred need to maintain himself as the
center of attention rears its head; he fires his stunt double and makes the decision to
do his own stunts.
The resulting accident is telegraphed almost before it happens - Bojack falls several stories
to land on a vehicle, severely injuring his back.
He’s rushed to the hospital and hooked up to an IV drip of pure Opiate goodness.
Bojack continues filming his show once he’s released from the hospital.
He makes time for Hollyhock’s visit, and they reconnect even with the hijinks-filled
adventure Bojack takes her on to find more narcotics- after she accidentally destroys
his entire supply.
He loses two weeks to another “accident,” and he finishes production of the show despite
taking 3 to 5 to 30 pills a day to numb the pain.
He stumbles through the red-carpet-premiere of his show in a drugged haze, where he gets
into a fight with Diane that’s been brewing all season long.
Bojack is not a good person.
He’s a drunken dickbag, a self-centered addicted asshole.
The choices he makes, the actions he chooses to take, don’t reflect someone who truly
cares about anyone but themselves.
When it comes right down to it in the end, Bojack is more interested in indulging himself
and excusing his own bad behavior than he is in trying to change.
Every major event: Sarah-lynn dying, Bojack almost having sex with a 17-year-old girl,
strangling his co-star and girlfriend, every crisis and turning point shows who Bojack
really is.
Through all the bullshit, through all the fake attempts at change, through all the fads,
the struggles to become a better person, to believe he’s somehow a better person...Bojack
is still Bojack.
He can’t erase the past, and he shouldn’t.
Every season includes events just like these.
Episodes that definitively show that Bojack isn’t the person he wants to be, or the
person others believe he is.
Deep down, Bojack hasn’t changed.
He’s the same asshole he always was, the type of person that should not and cannot
be forgiven for his actions.
He can make every grand gesture he wants.
He can victimise himself in every accident, but there’s no fixing the things he’s
done.
This entire season shows Bojack’s lack of change.
At the height of his career, when he’s made it, gotten everything he’s asked for, he’s
still a drug-addicted bullshitter wrecking his way through life and forcing traumatic
experiences on those around him.
He’s not the hero of this story.
He’s the main character, with more gruesome and unsavory experiences under his belt than
most of us will ever know.
Bojack’s life isn’t a lesson in how good people do bad things; it’s a harsh reality
check to everyone watching.
This is the show saying: You are responsible for everything you have done and everything
you will ever do.
And the things you do that are wrong are not always forgiven, they aren’t always ok,
they will haunt you.
Don’t take Bojack as an excuse to normalize your wrongs.
The show forces you to take a hard look in the mirror by watching someone much more fucked
up make common mistakes, not learn from them, and continue to make worse and even worse
mistakes.
This show asks you to take a look at your life, to fucking learn from what you’ve
done instead of rationalizing away what you can barely bring yourself to remember.
Season 5 is a metaphor for the show itself.
The show runners are saying “We don’t condone this type of behavior.
This isn’t ok.
If you have done these things, do not think you’re forgiven.
Do not think this gives you closure or clemency.
You have no right to feel better because Bojack.”
We all have have this little candle burning inside of us, hoping to grow bigger, wanting
to become this raging fire that we count on to keep us warm.
It grows when we are happy.
It diminishes when we fuck up.
Don’t let someone like Bojack Horseman be the example you use to grow your light, or
you may become just as fucked up as him.
That one was a little darker than usual.
I hope you don’t mind.
If you did let me know why you hated it, if you didn’t...let me know why you didn’t!
Sometimes it good to keep things...depressing.
I hope you learned something!
I know I did.
Anyway since you made it this far, I’d recommend hitting that subscribe button and smacking
that bell so you get notified whenever we post a new video.
DOIT!
After you do that...check out Deadpool The Story You Never Knew for some more keepin
it real stories you never knew.
Bojack Horseman would give it a 10/10...but he’s an asshole so do what you want.
That’s all I got for today.
I’m Grant, and I’ll see you in the next one.
Bye everyone!