Welcome to What Horse Is He Right Now Dot Com, a collection of stories by The Dot and Line about BoJack Horseman Season 5. Spoilers for Season 5 follow.
BoJack Horseman isn’t a show to shy away from referencing real-life scandals, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that this season focused heavily on #MeToo, highlighting the areas where an otherwise well-intended movement sometimes falls short.
It illustrates one of the biggest hypocrisies of the movement through Vance Waggoner, a.k.a. every man who has had a #MeToo scandal and ended up fine after the fact (or at least in his own mind, finding no issue with looking for a comeback within a year of their scandals).
Episode four of the latest season kicks off immediately with a procession of Vance Waggoner’s many public screw-ups. And, unsurprisingly, Vance is given chances to explain himself via fluffy TV interviews while he hands out jobs to friends as a means of making amends.
“Vance Waggoner, you hit a woman with a baseball bat. What’s your side of the story?”
“OK, look, when that altercation occurred, I was an immature child of 38. I’m not that guy anymore! Vance Waggoner respects women.”
In its typical dark humor fashion, TV shows give Waggoner chance after chance to redeem himself — all the while not reaching out to the people who are accusing him of these many wrongdoings. He continues to dig himself deeper into more overt, less excusable public scandals, eventually retiring from TV and the public altogether. He lays low in the midst of an apology tour for five years. That is, until Princess Caroline decides he’d be the perfect fit for Philbert.
“You’re getting a Forgivey? Damn, your publicist is good,” Princess Caroline says admiringly while poaching Waggoner for the role.
This exaggerated view of problematic men would be funnier if it didn’t hit so close to home. While we aren’t quite at the point where the real-life men who committed assaults have come full circle and been totally accepted by the public again, they’re at the very least trying. And there are plenty of apologists chomping at the bit to continue supporting them.
Kevin Spacey already starred in a new film, Billionaire Boys Club, despite a list of men coming forward with allegations against him in November 2017. Though the film didn’t do well (it made only $126 on its opening day), Spacey clearly believed laying low for nine months was enough to make amends for his past wrongs. And ultimately, there were still people who showed up on opening day and subsequent days, meaning he’s still got his pocket of supporters ready and waiting.
Around the same time as Spacey’s career did a nose-dive, so too did Louis C.K.’s. C.K. confirmed allegations that he masturbated in front of women and harassed female costars. And after another nine months of keeping his head down (does anyone else see a pattern emerging here?), C.K. recently made some surprise guest appearances in NYC’s Comedy Cellar and Levittown’s Governors’ Comedy Club. Despite admitting he had sexually harassed and assaulted numerous women, C.K. was met with standing ovations and delighted comedy club owners whose eyes likely turned to dollar signs when he walked his disgraced ass through their doors.
Roxane Gay wrote a poignant op-ed for The New York Times about C.K. and other abusers’ paths to redemption. “It is painful that these men think they are so vital to the culture that the public wants them to come back,” she wrote.
This all shouldn’t even come as a surprise, as history is cyclical once again. We can see this with Anita Hill’s horrendous court case from 1991 against Judge Clarence Thomas. Although she provided detailed accounts of Thomas’ harassment against her, the senators hearing her case refused to call her witnesses and Thomas’ supporters called Hill’s credibility into question.
John Oliver points out in a workplace sexual harassment episode on Last Week Tonight how the early 1990s saw multi-million-dollar settlements from Ford, women running for political positions (“The Year of the Women”), and a female-centric Oscars theme sparked by Hill’s case and a desire to end workplace harassment for good.
Sound familiar yet?
Unless actual change is made and those who commit assault are held to new standards, we’re going to find ourselves in this cycle again in 20 years. Solving sexual harassment by men in power can’t be a trend that we accept as a standard anymore. There needs to be a redemptive arc for the victims rather than celebrating a celebrity for not having a public scandal for nine months.
“This town is full of hypocrites. They act all shocked when one of their favorite stars turns out to be a dirtbag, but they can’t wait to give a comeback to all of the dirtbags we already know about.” As always, well said, Diane.
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