Look, we know, we write about BoJack Horseman too much. But while we have our grumbles about how often the media pretends it’s the first show to do what it does, there are a lot of good reasons why we, too, couldn’t get enough of the Sad Horse Show. And realizing just how soon it would be gone, we wanted to make sure we talked about the show’s last season and why we know we’ll miss it. So we did. Here’s what we said. Spoilers for Season 6 definitely, absolutely follow.
John Maher: OK, you dinks. First things first. What did we think about this season?
Sammy Nickalls: While I liked this season, it did feel a touch rushed. I think it’s very possible that I’ve just got attached to all these characters and wanted to see each one get a fleshed-out conclusion (for lack of a better word, because the themes of BoJack are pretty much “life happens and then you die”), but that’s not necessarily realistic. And to its credit, if the show had to choose only some characters to give more screentime this season, it chose the right ones. But I still think it could have done with just one more season.
Eric Vilas-Boas: Those decisions all worked for me. I never expected BoJack Horseman—the show or the character—to get a happy ending in all of this. But I was pleasantly surprised to see more-or-less all the main players who we saw BoJack had harmed brought back into the fold and his comeuppance dramatized. I really liked how it focused on that, when I thought we sorta had seen the emotional finish of Diane’s arc and had seen Todd and Princess Carolyn on their way to wrapping up their arcs (or taking their arcs in new family-oriented directions). There was nothing I felt was inherently missing, but I agree that we could have got another season of story, probably, and trust that it would have been gold. The writers/animators/performers on that show are just that good.
JHM: I can’t imagine another season of BoJack Horseman doing any harm to the storytelling either. Bumping the episode count on this season to 16, from 12, certainly helped with the pacing—I think if they had only had 12 episodes, this would have been much less satisfying. We saw a bit of a preview of what that could have looked like in the mid-season finale (“A Quick One, While He’s Away”), which I loved as an episode but not as a mid-season finale. And I do think some of the wrap-up arcs, especially Todd’s and Mr. Peanutbutter’s, felt a bit rushed. I’m fairly willing to blame Netflix for that, though, and not the BoJack team! And circumstances aside, I really did love the finale. Aside from the introductory montage sequence, I thought everything hit. The pacing on the season might have been a bit spotty, but when it came to wrapping it all up, I thought the time spent on BoJack’s final confrontations with the characters closest to him all landed right: I had a wry smile and bitter tear lodged in one eye for pretty much the entire episode, and if that doesn’t sum up this show’s take on living, I’m not sure what does. But before we talk about the ending from a character perspective, I’m curious to hear how you all felt about the themes this show explored in its final season and how it handled them: cancel culture, ratings-obsessed media, and a Hollywoo[d/b] that loves to forget its failures.
SN: I think they did a great job of handling that with nuance. I was honestly a little bit nervous about how they were going to do it, because it’s incredibly difficult to strike the balance between not letting BoJack off the hook and accurately portraying Hollywood’s treatment of problematic men, but I think they nailed it. I think what they did with the two interviews was brilliant, because it painted how the media often vindicates abusers AND how it could open up real conversations by asking the tough questions. And, slightly off-topic but kind of not, I thought their treatment of Hollyhock was brilliant. At first, I really wanted to them to share what was in her note, but I think their decision to not reveal its contents was smart, because it felt like a nod to women who need to do what they have to do to protect themselves.
EVB: So many feelings and so glad you brought up the two interviews, Sammy, since they’re not in the finale, but they are so important to understanding the show’s perspective on this. I think the POV of the show from the beginning was always that BoJack was always a bad person who did bad things, but had these ever-widening and receding cracks open toward his path of redemption. And the idea of “cancel culture” itself is kind of all about that, right? The fear that you’ll be denied opportunity and ostracized if you don’t adhere to some social justice bogeyman. But the reality is that society is very willing to forgive bad men and other problematic faves. (I don’t want to distract too much, but the fact that we’re talking about this on literally the afternoon that Kobe Bryant, a basketball superstar and iconic Los Angeles citizen and alleged rapist, dies and is eulogized is pretty fucking raw!)
And I think it was so much more powerful and compelling that BoJack wasn’t ultimately nailed to the wall by a disembodied “cancel culture,” and not even necessarily solely by the women who had the receipts for his bad behavior, but by his own hubris, his own self-obsession, his own flaws, etc. He needed to go back for a second interview. I also would need to go back to the finale, but I don’t think the episode ever once implies that BoJack won’t work again or won’t find success in Hollywoo[d/b]. The open-endedness of that felt true to life and true to the show’s outlook.
JHM: It definitely doesn’t imply that. There’s even a moment of fraught exchange between BoJack and Princess Carolyn at her public wedding (yes, of course she had a real wedding and then one for show) when she raises the possibility of a comeback thanks to the popularity of his project with fellow cancellee Vance Waggoner, he gets a little too excited about it considering that his path to true redemption really shouldn’t be through Hollywood, and a producer in the background makes a “call me” sign to him.
One thing I really liked about this episode and season is how meta it stayed to the end, even as it wasn’t too obvious about that meta-narrative. BoJack…gets canceled! (Just like the show.) But there’s the possibility for a revival dangled. (And if we know anything about media properties, they all seem to come back.) But while it makes it clear that, because of human foibles—PC says something in the finale along the lines of “people have short memories, it’s the best and worst thing about people”—public forgiveness is almost always an option for failed men like BoJack, what it also makes clear is that private forgiveness is not. And I think here is where we can dig into the relationships between the show’s key characters, and how they ended.
SN: Going back to Hollyhock, I really like how they treated that. I found myself hoping that she’ll forgive him, but then I checked myself and realized, why would she? She’s right around Penny’s age, so why should she keep BoJack in her life if he makes her deeply uncomfortable? Because he’s her brother? So often, media (and society in general) pushes the narrative that blood is the most important thing, that you have to keep your family members in your life, even if their principals challenge the very foundations of your beliefs, even if they inflict trauma (or trigger trauma). It was refreshing to see a show give a young woman agency without delving into the ins and outs of her reasoning, because the fact is that she doesn’t need to have a reason.
JHM: I thought her absence in the finale was particularly powerful, too. That BoJack had failed her vision of him so utterly that the possibility of reconciliation after his prison stint was removed entirely.
EVB: Yep, absolutely. BoJack’s punishment is losing Hollyhock and gaining Mr. Peanutbutter as the guy who has to pick him up from PRISON. The episode is also very funny. I was kinda dying at the photo op thing.
SN: There was something particularly powerful about Mr. Peanutbutter being the prison pick-up guy, too, if you think about how BoJack screwed over Todd way back in Season 1. Maybe powerful isn’t the right word—maybe “ayyyyyyyyy, I see what they did there” is better.
EVB: Yeah, I thought that too. Like, Todd has enough empathy and emotional savvy to pull BoJack away from discomfort at the wedding and get him some space, but Todd’s self-actualization is complete and he’s never going to be BoJack’s punk again. In any kind of way. I honestly want a Mr. Peanutbutter spinoff! He’s the one who grew the least, I think, of the leads, throughout the whole show.
SN: I WOULD LOVE A MR. PEANUTBUTTER SPINOFF. They’d need a master list of pop culture references.
JHM: I totally agree with Peanutbutter growing the least, and I think that’s the most unsatisfying arc to me in this season. I wish Todd’s family got more time, but Todd’s growth all landed for me, despite the rush. For PB, I wanted more—I wanted to see how committed he was to being his own source of validation and support, rather than depending on codependency. Whereas I found the Princess Carolyn arc utterly satisfying. She had the opposite lesson to learn: it’s necessary to rely on other people to get through this life, and to believe in them when they believe in you. It’s necessary to accept help. As a chronic I’LL JUST DO IT MYSELF type of person, that really resonated for me, and to finally see someone whose prized her own savviness time and time again yet consistently placed her bets on completely untrustworthy people (BoJack) finally come around to realizing what we all should have known all along: Judah really is the man, now and forever, dawg. EVB, I know you have more thoughts on that.
EVB: Forthcoming! First, I need to correct the record.
I honestly loved that Judah was ultimately redeemed here, even if I still stand by that her canning him was the correct move at the time. And like, he was fully redeemed. The singing! The guitar! “I love you, Princess Carolyn.” My frozen heart, thawed.
SN: Judah + Princess Carolyn (Princess Judalyn?) was hands down my favorite part of the season.
EVB: But yes, Princess Carolyn’s arc worked for me completely. I would also say my favorite single episode of the season was Diane’s creative struggle in “Good Damage.” From the formal deconstruction (helmed by newly minted episode director James Bowman) to the deconstruction of the ideas about trauma and its role in the creation of personal art to the mental health components undergirding her struggle with the book. I think it’s up there with 8 1/2 and Kiki’s Delivery Service as among the great representations of creative blocks.
And the way the last episode paid that off in Diane and BoJack’s final conversation—not immediately telling you what she was up to, what she was working on, and whether she was still with Guy—was great, too. BoJack wasn’t entitled to that information, and we as the audience only get it as she slowly reveals it. All that was pitch-perfect.
SN: Agreed. I also am a sucker for good twists, and I loved that the writers made us think they broke up only to reveal that they got married, instead—something that I previously would have thought impossible for Diane after her divorce with Mr. Peanutbutter. Also, their having done that really emphasized the character development Diane has undergone over the last season. Bailing on Houston totally is something Diane would have done as recently as one season ago.
EVB: Yes. Also, I really liked this exchange:
BOJACK: “How’d you learn to trust it? The happiness?”
DIANE: “I didn’t, but I trust him.”
And then it just sits there for a beat or two. It’s great dialogue.
JHM: I also loved “Good Damage,” and it reminded me of something I’ve written about before: how certain episodes of BoJack Horseman employed similar tactics to Neon Genesis Evangelion in order to show the ways people think. That was one of those episodes. Another thing I liked about that episode was another meta-narrative. Diane thinks she has to write the Great American Memoir, as if, in her head, she’s obligated to be the Korean-American Joan Didion in order to justify her pain and validate her existence as an artist. Except…middle grade novels can be art, too! Just like cartoons!
SN: I love how they use different styles of animation to give us a glimpse of characters’ brains.
EVB: Absolutely. BoJack proved over the course of six seasons that it can’t NOT be self-reflexive. And in most other shows, at the frequency they do it, it’d get exhausting and tired, but it’s telling that we still love that shit and want more after six seasons.
SN: In general, the BoJack team is incredibly good at keeping it varied while knowing when to call back. That was especially obvious in this season, because it felt like they were saying goodbye via callbacks, and they felt perfectly peppered in. ALSO CAN WE TALK ABOUT BOJACK LIKING HONEYDEW NOW. That mini storyline in itself is gold.
EVB: Remind me of the honeydew bit?
SN: I think it was in the last episode—BoJack sees honeydew on the table and starts to be his standard level of repulsed, and we think it’s going to be another honeydew joke, but instead his face changes a little and he tries it and finds he kinda likes it. GROWTH.
EVB: Incredible.
JHM: To come back to BoJack and Diane, I found the full circle on that relationship to be the most satisfying thing about this season precisely because it was so unsatisfying—that of course, after years of a complex, mutually abusive relationship, only time and space allowed for the realization that they can love each other and also be bad for each other. And that’s why I absolutely adored the way the show ended: The final conversation between Diane and BoJack was filled with time and space, both in terms of lengthy gaps in the conversation and both the physical and emotional distance between the two. I kept rewinding and watching that last few minutes of the finale over and over, even though it broke my heart, because I needed to see it: a reminder that we can love someone and know too that our love for them is poisoned, that we can outgrow that relationship, and that we can know how necessary that is but also how hard.
That last minute, as this devastating song plays and Diane and BoJack keep looking at each other, wanting to reach out, wanting to say something, anything, but realizing that no touch would be healing and there were no more words to be said, was just…wow. To my mind, this was the only way this show could end: knowing that, to quote Semisonic, “every new beginning is some other beginning’s end,” and that, for these two characters to really change and live the lives they need to live, they needed to end their relationship, the one that began the whole show. There’s hope in all this, of course, but there’s also hopelessness. It was wistful and painful, bitter and sweet. It was exactly what BoJack does best. And yet I know, Sammy, that you felt differently!
SN: I really didn’t like that scene when I watched it, but your breakdown of it makes me reconsider, John. At the time, I felt like it was stilted and awkward, and that it was trying to communicate something but failing in a film-school-style, trying-too-hard way. But I hadn’t thought of it through that lens.
EVB: Yeah, I definitely thought similarly that watching Diane and BoJack interact was almost painfully awkward, but it felt natural/realistic that it would play out that way to me. For me it definitely worked, and my musical reference for it was “Words That We Couldn’t Say” from the Cowboy Bebop OST lololol. I ALSO liked how Diane and PC’s convos with BoJack contrasted so dramatically and lined up with their contrasting relationships to him. Both of their exchanges in the finale felt moving and personal and fair in their own ways to me, and as his closest female relationships, we watched their interactions in relationship to each other through the whole season: Diane refusing to be a part of his redemption campaign and PC helping him up to the point where she just couldn’t anymore, etc.
SN: Yes, agreed! They felt very true to each character as well. I wouldn’t have believed it if the show made PC and BoJack’s relationship crumble. It always felt like it was on sturdier ground, even considering their lack of boundaries.
EVB: PC’s line about “Sunk costs and all that” in the episode of the same name crystallized it perfectly I think. “Sunk cost” is a fallacy, but that doesn’t stop Hollywoo[d/b] from building major franchises around it, putting out movies they know will stink, etc etc.
JHM: I think that’s all true. And I think that also brings us to the Big Question here. What is BoJack Horseman’s legacy, as a television show and as a critique of American pop culture and its environs, and did this episode, and the season preceding it, cement it?
SN: Just like people who deify Rick Sanchez are misunderstanding several fundamental points of Rick and Morty, being a fan of BoJack Horseman the show does not mean being a fan of BoJack Horseman the character. I was, admittedly, afraid the show would try to redeem him, though I should have given RBW more credit than that.
Because what made this final season so refreshing was that it wasn’t trying to wrap everything up into a neat little package. Throughout the series, BoJack yearned for answers—am I a good person? what will fix me? am I worthy of love?—and didn’t get a concrete answer to a single one of them. Because those questions are missing the point.
I wanted every loose end to get tied in this series, because sweet Jesus, I love it so much, and I’ve become so invested in these characters, both despite and because of their flaws. But more often than not in real life, loose ends remain loose ends. And for a show about anthropomorphic animals living among humans, BoJack Horseman is pretty damn true to life.
It may very well just be me, but I did think each season of BoJack cemented one theme more and more: Nothing matters at all, and everything matters so, so much. Staring these truths in the face is what BoJack Horseman did best. And that will remain its legacy for decades to come.
EVB: As a critic, but also as a creative writer, it’s impossible for me to conceive of stories without thinking through how they end. This goes for journalism especially: What’s my kicker quote going to be? How am I going to point toward my next story with the end of the one I’m working on? But real life neither keeps time with neat narrative beats, nor makes guarantees about what its endings will look like. If we hurt others, or others hurt us, that pain reverberates and lingers and festers on its own schedule, inherently messing with any kind of narrative equilibrium.
But as sophisticated and experimental as serialized TV storytelling has grown in the Golden Age of Television, we still crave returns to equilibrium to consider our endings satisfying. Even the most inventive, memorable ones bring us back to equilibrium. Spike Spiegel dies, Walter White dies, everyone on Six Feet Under dies, Don Draper meditates and dreams up Coca-Cola ads, and the list runs on. These are all gorgeous, powerful endings in their own respects, but they resolve tension cleanly, returning us to equilibrium with few questions to ask afterward, unless you happen to quibble with a detail.
But BoJack Horseman, like many of the best stories, has always known that uncertainty and tension and space all create drama. It’s also always self-reflexively understood that uncertainty is the norm in Hollywoo[d/b], be that in TV financing, star power, intimate relationships, or in volatile personalities. So it’s fitting that BoJack Horseman would end not with a death or even a reassurance that things would improve, but on continued uncertainty. Diane challenges BoJack with a final bit of wisdom: “Sometimes life’s a bitch, and then you keep living.”
I see the show’s legacy in what they do after she says it. They both keep living and fidgeting as they gaze up at the corner of sky they must briefly share. What happens next is uncertain.
JHM: A few seasons ago, BoJack Horseman reminded me of the great poem “This Be the Verse” by Philip Larkin, so I riffed on it accordingly for The Dot and Line. Now, at its ending, it reminds me of another poem, one of my very favorites, “Fox Sleep” by W.S. Merwin. This section in particular:
Every time they assembled and he spoke to them
from “Fox Sleep,” by W.S. Merwin
about waking there was an old man who stood listening
and left before the others until one day the old man stayed
and Who are you he asked the old man
and the old man answered I am not a man
many lives ago I stood where you are standing
and they assembled in front of me and I spoke to them
about waking until one day one of them asked me
When someone has wakened to what is really there
is that person free of the chain of consequences
and I answered yes and with that I turned into a fox
and I have been a fox for five hundred lives
and now I have come to ask you to say what will
free me from the body of a fox please tell me
when someone has wakened to what is really there
is that person free of the chain of consequences
and this time the answer was That person sees it as it is
then the old man said Thank you for waking me
you have set me free of the body of the fox
which you will find on the other side of the mountain
I ask you to bury it please as one of your own
that evening he announced a funeral service
for one of them but they said nobody has died
then he led them to the other side of the mountain
and a cave where they found a fox’s body
and he told them the story and they buried the fox
as one of them but later one of them asked
what if he had given the right answer every time
No show can exist without consequence. But BoJack Horseman is, above all, a show about the chain of consequences, from which there is no escape. In the end, the sad horse at its center finds himself at the end of a link on that chain, and while he did not give the right answer every time (or maybe any time at all), in the end, as much as a horse such as he possibly could, he sees it as it is. That’s the ending this show deserved. And as a consequence, I’ll be thinking about it, hard, and for a while. For me, that’s just enough, man.
Thanks for reading The Dot and Line, where we talk about animation of all kinds. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter.