It’s no Game of Thrones, packed with too many characters to count, but in its own way, BoJack Horseman is one of the densest shows on television. Sub-plots of vital importance fade into the background only to return a couple of seasons later, and sometimes, it’s hard to remember just how many people BoJack has fucked over during the course of the series. Since Season 6 doubles down on continuity in a big way, it’s vital to keep track of all the threads—so we’ve rounded up some of the most important of those threads in this primer for the penultimate batch of episodes of everyone’s favorite sad horse show. Be sure to catch up before cramming eight new horse kicks to the face this weekend.
“Still Broken,” Season 2
“No matter what, we’re going to stick together,” Herb Kazzaz (Stanley Tucci) says in the opening flashback before the episode smash cuts to Herb’s own memorial service, where his final tweets are read by Henry Winkler. The editing choice and the episode were indicative of just how strong this series had grown even as early as Season 2, and the episode is as emotionally gut-wrenching as it is portentous. BoJack, Sarah Lynn, and their Horsin’ Around costars all reference what could be their next death in the family (which will be Sarah Lynn’s), and Charlotte shows up at the services as well, giving BoJack the card that would carefully lead him to New Mexico. In some ways, Kazzaz’s last “fuck you” to BoJack was the series of decisions BoJack made in the wake of Kazzaz’s death—a specter BoJack hasn’t shaken nearly five years later.
“Escape From L.A.,” Season 2
Save for the infamous drug trip episodes, “Escape from L.A.” sees BoJack at his most lost. In an attempt to break free from Hollywoo—or perhaps more accurately, himself—BoJack takes a road trip to New Mexico to see his old friend, Charlotte Carson (Olivia Wilde). But his attempt to force himself into the Carson family and adopt their life as his own goes horribly awry when he attends prom with Charlotte’s teenage daughter, Penny (Ilana Glazer)—a decision sure to come back to haunt him.
“Fish Out of Water,” Season 3
This is the episode you show people who’ve never once seen BoJack to get them hooked on the show. The term “bottle episode” might now be overused, but “Fish Out of Water” hit BoJack‘s out of the park with gorgeous animated showmanship and a plot that leads BoJack through the Pacific Ocean and into a brief caregiving relationship with a small seahorse child. By keeping it dialogue-free (as BoJack can’t figure out how to speak using the microphone in his air helmet), the episode also literalizes just how brutally isolated BoJack has become due to his own character flaws, substance abuse, and mental health history up to this point in the series. In the end, he saves the seahorse baby, but gets a vocal comeuppance vis-a-vis his own technological incompetence, and the person who points it out to him is a total rando on the ocean floor. It’s genius, and it’s exactly that barrier between BoJack and other people that plays into every episode of the show in one way or another.
“That’s Too Much, Man!” Season 3
You may be surprised to read that the episode that ends with Sarah Lynn’s death opens on a shot of a painting of her dead in a riverbed. It hangs above her bed, and is one of the first things that greets her when she wakes up every day. “Your skin is ‘murdered-baby’ soft,” she reassures herself. None of this excuses what BoJack did to her: enable her addiction and bring her on a bender that resulted in her death. But it provides context for the self-destructive person Sarah Lynn was and the fact that she needed not a drinking buddy, but someone who could genuinely empathize with her and guide her through her afflictions. BoJack was never going to be that person. Instead: “In a way, it’s like you destroyed her life twice,” Sarah Lynn says, not about herself but about Penny, the young deer BoJack groomed and almost molested. Even so, the horseshoe fits for Sarah Lynn’s life, too.
“Time’s Arrow,” Season 4
This one reveals the messy primordial goo from which BoJack was begat, and it’s a genius episode of television—maybe even the show’s best. The way it slowly unfurls the flashbacks detailing how BoJack’s mom Beatrice (Wendie Malick) got so shitty, how BoJack’s shitty mom met BoJack’s shitty dad (voiced, like BoJack, by Will Arnett), and how they were shitty to BoJack in turn is just about the most harrowing depiction of intergenerational trauma ever made. It’s also brilliantly animated, from the way Beatrice’s own shitty dad is framed to look like a literal devil horse to the canny scribbled-out faces of everyone in Beatrice’s receding memory. In the end she gets grace and vindication all her own. She’s just a person, after all, and there was good in her once, despite her godawful rearing. It’s a lesson BoJack has been learning about himself the entire show.
“Free Churro,” Season 5 (BoJack’s mom’s funeral)
It would take years to erase this whopper of a concept episode from your memory, but it’s still worth a rewatch before diving into Season 6. The entirety of “Free Churro” is BoJack’s eulogy to his verbally abusive mother, Beatrice Horseman, at what he thinks is her funeral—because, in true BoJack Horseman fashion, the episode’s end reveals that he was at the wrong funeral the entire time. Season 6 delves into BoJack’s harrowing past more than most earlier seasons, so this episode serves as a characteristically depressing refresh on BoJack and Beatrice’s rocky relationship.
“Ancient History,” Season 5
This show is known to take tiny jokes and successfully roll with them far longer than you’d ever think possible, and Season 6 is no exception. In “Ancient History,” Mr. Peanutbutter comes up with the harebrained idea of Birthday Dad, a movie inspired by a greeting card he spotted in a bookstore—a harebrained idea that gets plenty of traction in the new season.
“Head in the Clouds,” Season 5
The Philbert premiere serves as last season’s whopper of a finale, and for good reason. BoJack had been using the character of Philbert as justification for his own actions, right up until the point where he just can’t. This episode, while deftly handled, is an ugly one, showcasing one of the nastiest fights between Diane and BoJack that echoes back to him throughout the sixth season—most notably, Diane’s exclamation of “You haven’t changed at all!” But as a delightful plus, this episode will remind you what’s been going on with character actress turned nun Margo Martindale—which is what we know you’ve all been most worried about, anyway.
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