This post contains spoilers for the final episodes of BoJack Horseman.
In the wake of “Ruthie,” the Season 4 episode of BoJack Horseman in which Princess Carolyn imagines a future where her descendants thrive while experiencing a crushing professional setback and a bona-fide betrayal from her (well-meaning) assistant, I wrote this sentence:
“Judah Mannowdog isn’t the man now, dog.”
Judah has always been a complicated character on BoJack Horseman, though one whose complexity was hidden beneath a veneer of polite helpfulness. Judah played the perfect assistant—complete with attention to diction, precise grammar, sharp taste in suits, high cheekbones, and a tightly wound man bun—to Princess Carolyn’s demands… until he screwed up big time when he told another exec that she had no plans to sell her company. Though his heart was in the right place, Judah was rightly fired for going behind Princess Carolyn’s back.
Princess Carolyn’s arc on BoJack has always been about the sacrifices she’s made in her personal life for the sake of her professional life. Judah was that tension in microcosm. Here was a prim, ruthlessly efficient assistant who met every expectation. He also happened to be the ideal sub to her dom, acquiescing to her needs like a servant. And even so, the Princess Carolyn of Season 4 pushed him away. At the time, and to this day, I still think Princess Carolyn made the right call. Judah was insubordinate, and when she confronted him about it, his defense was to admit to lying to her and mention how emotional she was. Judah’s employment was terminated for established cause.
But by the time Season 6 rolled around, Princess Carolyn had survived a more than a few crises and become a single parent to a beautiful porcupine baby girl she had named Ruthie, and Judah had developed a biking habit. It was a canny bit of plotting bringing him back in the first half of Season 6 to negotiate on behalf of assistants on strike in Hollywoo[b/d], but what was much cooler to see was the shifted dynamic between him and Princess Carolyn. After bargaining wraps, Princess Carolyn invites him to work with her, this time not as an assistant, but as her company’s chief of operations, with stock options. The power balance here has evened out considerably in Judah’s time away. Now he bikes, corrects Princess Carolyn’s grammar, and doesn’t bend over backwards for her. He does however indicate that he represses his emotions. He is only capable of revealing them through song—hence his guitar, his band, and the soft serenade he offers Princess Carolyn later in the season.
“Please believe me when I tell you I love you,” he sings. “I love you, Princess Carolyn.” It’s the beginning of a beautiful love story.
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