When cartoons first became popular I'm sure being a medium for serious self examination, life issues, and existential thought weren't high on the creator's list of priorities. Many cartoons have maintained the old aim it at kids and throw in a lesson now and then format but in recent years( the last 20 or so) a few have branched off and become more adult oriented. I think that having a place where we can examine serious issues with a veneer of comedy is a great resource for the many people who suffer with these questions in silence every day. That's one of the hard things to explain to someone who grew up with the old style cartoons, these shows may have funny one liners and running jokes but at their core they are dramas. Animation as a medium for serious drama/discussion has in my experience a significant generational gap. My own parents have often said that they can't really get past the fact that it's a cartoon when I try to show them one of these series( though they did come around to King of The Hill eventually) and it's hard for them to take it seriously. One of the best currently running is Bojack Horseman, and that's the one I want to talk about today. Warning Serious Bojack Horseman Spoilers Ahead, Read At Your Own Risk!!!!!!!!!!!!
"You know, sometimes I think I was born with a leak, and any goodness I started with just slowly spilled out of me and now its all gone. And I'll never get it back in me. It's too late. Life is a series of closing doors, isn't it?"
Quotes like the one above are pretty par for the course when it comes to Bojack Horseman. For anyone who doesn't know, Bojack Horseman is about a 90's sitcom star battling against his own troubled past and inner demons and trying to stall his slide into obscurity. At least that is what it started out as. With every new failure or ruined friendship( many sabotaged by Bojack himself) Bojack sinks deeper into the abyss. No matter how hard the people around him try to pull him out, he just can't defeat his own nature. Something broke Bojack a long time ago( or more likely a combination of many factors) and he has just been circling the drain ever since. This show is not for the faint of heart, if you are looking for a good time you should probably pick another show. You are signing up to watch the slow suicide of a person too smart for their own good and too scared to do anything about it. That's not to say that Bojack is the only character with serious problems. His friend/ghostwriter/love interest/conscience Diane, his agent Princess Carolyn, his former rival Mr. Peanutbutter(actual first name Mr.), and Todd his roommate(to name just a few) all have serious issues both caused by Bojack and completely independent of him. The writers of this show do an amazing job and I want to highlight some of the most impactful story points and discussions so far.
"Zoes and Zeldas" Season 1 Episode 4
" You can live your happy Zelda life in this happy Zelda town, and pretend you're a happy Zelda. But I know you, and this isn't you. People don't change, Diane, not really."
Let's kick it off with one of Bojack's darkest early moments. Perpetual slacker and couch surfer Todd finally catches his big break when a rock opera he has been working on gets picked up by a big-time producer, unfortunately for Todd, Bojack isn't ready to let him go just yet. Bojack fears being alone and forgotten above all else and when it becomes clear that Todd may soon be moving on from his life with him, Bojack takes steps to ensure that the project will fail. Earlier Todd had told Bojack that he had become addicted to a video game and after 5 years of it consuming his life he was kicked out on his own with nowhere to go. Seeing his opening Bojack hires esteemed character actress Margo Martindale to serve as an inciting bystander, buys a copy of the latest game in the series, plants it in a discount bin at their local convenience store, then takes Todd on a snack run the night before a big meeting with investors with a huge deadline looming. Todd falls into the trap and despite promising to only play the game when his work is done he quickly falls back into his old addiction. As you would expect he blows the big meeting and is completely devastated. At the end of the episode Bojack arrives at Margo Martindale's house to pay her and she says " I don't feel good about what we did tonight Bojack", to which he replies " This never happened". There had been clues before, but this is the first time we see what Bojack is truly capable off. He is so alone and so afraid of change he is willing to bring down everyone around him just to preserve his sad status quo. I've known a few people like this in my life and this episode really hit home with me and cemented the ride we were in for.
"That's Too Much, Man!" Season 3 Episode 11
"See, Sarah Lynn? We're not doomed. In the great grand scheme of things, we're just tiny specks that will one day be forgotten. So it doesn't matter what we did in the past or how we'll be remembered, the only thing that matters is right now, this moment. This one spectacular moment we are sharing together. Right, Sarah Lynn? [she doesn't respond] Sarah Lynn? [cut to black, stopping all music and sound] Sarah Lynn?"
The next critical moment is the death of Sarah Lynn. Starring alongside Bojack in the sitcom Horsin' Around, Sarah Lynn's career took a significantly different path. The show was only the beginning for her career, she soon skyrocketed into the world of super-stardom as a pop princess and became even more self-destructive than Bojack. Not only did she express a profound loneliness and regret, she covered it with an excessive level ( even by Bojack standards) of drugs and drinking. Being all but burned out by 30 she came back in to Bojack's life. She eventually snapped back to reality and was 9 months sober( though she claimed it was only to make the next high even better) when the fateful call back to her old life from Bojack came. Distraught over not receiving an Oscar nomination and his rapidly collapsing personal relationships, he invites Sarah Lynn to go on a massive bender with him to drown his pain. She snaps right back in to her old bad habits and they drink, smoke, inject, and snort everything they can find. Over the course of the drug-fueled rampage Bojack blacks out repeatedly making it impossible to know how much time as really passed. He tries to make amends with people he's hurt which leads to a very telling line from his Oscar publicist Ana. "After I almost drowned, I decided I would never again be weaker than water. So I became a lifeguard. On my first day of training, my instructor told me that there are going to be times when you'll see someone in trouble. You're going to want to rush in there and do whatever you can to save them. But you have to stop yourself. Because there are some people you can't save. Because those people will thrash and struggle, and try to take you down with them", to which a drunk/high Bojack says " What does that have to do with me?". Earlier on Sarah Lynn confessed to Bojack that what she really wanted was to be an architect, and as they sit at the planetarium high on the Bojack branded heroin from earlier in the season, she repeats this wish as she slumps against his shoulder in a dark theater. Bojack goes into the quote from above not realizing that she has died.
This was really one of the saddest moments in the series so far. Chewed up and spit out by Hollywood and dead at just 31. While you can argue that it was bound to happen, Bojack could have intervened to stop it. Sarah Lynn respected him and looked to him as a father-figure, if he had seriously tried to help her she would have lived, and he knows it. He even says as much himself, Even though he knew that dragging her back in to this life style would get her killed, he did it anyway, just to have somebody to die with. Unfortunately, Bojack found out what many people like him eventually do, it's the people around you that usually bear the price of what you do. This is definitely Bojack's lowest point for me so far.
"Time's Arrow" Season 4 Episode 11
"Time's arrow neither stands still nor reverses. It merely marches forward."
The final point I want to highlight is the episode that tries( and I feel succeeds) to show what it's like to live with dementia. I've personally watched someone decline and fade away from dementia so perhaps that made it resonate more powerfully with me. Bojack's mother Beatrice( whose trouble childhood led her to constantly put down and demean Bojack) has dementia and has been staying with him after he and his presumed daughter Hollyhock visit her in her nursing home and Hollyhock insists on bringing her home after she is thrown out for fighting. She constantly asks for the baby and how the girl is doing. She also refers to Bojack as Henrietta. After she poisons Hollyhock with weight loss medicine mixed in to her coffee Bojack flies into a rage and drives her to the worst nursing home he can find. Along the way we switch to her perspective and re live parts of her life. You really need to watch to see what I mean about showing what it's like to have dementia, but I'll do my best to describe it. Beatrice jumps between time periods at a moments notice, sees present events mixed with the past, has all but a few faces of the people in the scenes blanked out, is alarmed that her reflection appears old, and most jarringly has objects pop in and out of her memories as she is reminded and then forgets them again. Over the course of the memories we learn that Henrietta is the maid Bojack's father Butterscotch slept with, and the girl is Hollyhock, Bojack's sister, not his daughter. She remembers everything and nothing at the same time. The information is all there, she just can't access it at will anymore. As Bojack is leaving her for the last time she has a moment of clarity, she calls his name and asks where they are. Despite his earlier anger and promise to tell her off if she ever becomes lucid again, he sits quietly down beside her and tells her that they are at her old summer home with all of her family. Bojack asks if she can taste the vanilla ice cream they are eating and she replies that it is delicious, though her smile fades, most likely because she was never allowed to eat ice cream. This is the last time Bojack will ever speak to her.
Not only does this episode explore an often overlooked subject but it does it in a way that expands the character of both Beatrice and Bojack. You get a look at Beatrice's life and what made her so cold, and you get to see a little spark of humanity in Bojack. Despite all the terrible things that happened between them he was still there for her when it really mattered, even if she might not have done the same. I would have to say that this episode is tied for saddest with "That's Too Much, Man!". Dementia is scary, but I'm glad they told this story.
All of the episodes I picked were based solely on what was most impactful to me. Bojack Horseman is filled with all kinds of thought provoking episodes, these are just a few that I like the most. All of these episodes are supremely sad in different but no less heart-rending ways. Cartoons aren't just for kids anymore, Rick and Morty and Bojack Horseman are the two best adult cartoons around now, though I would say that Rick and Morty tends to keep things lighter than Bojack most of the time. These shows may have a camouflage of comedy but deep down they are serious. I think a veil of comedy is a great way to describe the structure of both of these shows, they both try to use comedy to hide their pain. I hope we get more shows like this and I would highly recommend Bojack Horseman, not as a comedy though, you will probably leave more bummed out than when you started. If you read this article and haven't seen the show( I warned you) you can still watch it, I only gave a bare-bones account of each one and Time's Arrow really needs to be seen to be understood. Thank you for reading.