Alternative Character Interpretation / BoJack Horseman

Alternative Character Interpretation in BoJack Horseman.

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BoJack

• Bojack himself deliberately teeters between jerkass and Jerkass Woobie for the entire show, and whichever one he's more of varies from episode to episode. It's ultimately up to the viewer to decide whether he's...
  • ...a person with the ability to be genuinely compassionate to the people he cares about, but is unable to properly express it due to his damaged psyche brought on by a lifetime of abuse which he can only improve upon so much, despite his best efforts.
  • ...too set in his ways to ever take responsibilities for his actions and will only ever be a selfish jerkass who only cares about himself while wallowing in self-pity.
  • ...somewhere in-between: he knows he's a toxic person and wants more than anything to be better, and all of his efforts at self improvement really are him trying his absolute hardest, but he's so emotionally and mentally damaged that he'll never be good enough. For that matter, is he really not trying his hardest or does the rest of the world just not appreciate or even recognize his genuine efforts?
    • In-Universe, Diane worries that Philbert, whose personality bears more than a passing resemblance to BoJack’s, is informing viewers about certain toxic character traits or just enabling people who already have them.
  • Are we, the audience, even supposed to like Bojack? Are we expected to be emotionally invested in his struggles or are we expected to be ambivalent towards him as a person and just judge his actions? In a few promotional videos, Raphael Bob-Weskerberg jokingly calls him "this idiot," with seemingly no regard to the fact that audiences do have an emotional connection with him and don't just see him as a pawn.
  • BoJack himself questions his motivations when it comes out that he left Sarah Lynn to die and didn't call 911 for seventeen minutes after she stopped breathing in the planetarium. The reason was to create an alibi that she called him, and thus making it look like he wasn't responsible. It turns out that he didn't remember doing this owing to all the drugs in his system but had suspected he had done something worse than give her the drugs that caused her overdose, hence his caginess about discussing what happened. Biscuits Braxby uses this information to blindside BoJack and paint him as a predator that likes evading the consequences of his actions, and his every attempt to deflect only makes him look worse. The ambiguous part is that BoJack has done similar actions while drunk or high, from scheduling ghostwriting sessions with Diane to stealing the D from Hollywood.

Princess Carolyn

• Princess Carolyn: a confident, if desperate agent that tries to find meaning in her life? Or is she just as self-destructive as BoJack, but simply hides it better?
• Is Vanessa Gekko really any worse than Princess Carolyn? How much of their rivalry is fueled by PC being jealous of how Gekko managed to have a lasting marriage, children, and overall lifestyle she's longed for but could never get? Somewhat answered when Vanessa is shocked that Princess Carolyn admits to hating her.
• Did Ruthie's birthmom genuinely think that Princess Carolyn was too work absorbed to care for her daughter, or was it a Secret Test of Character. She tells PC that she was the only prospective mother who accepted her decision when told, so the latter option is a possibility.

Diane Ngyuen

• Does Diane have a better grip on her mental health & trauma ? And is her advice to others (either towards Bojack or through her column) wisdom from actual life lessons or is she a Know-Nothing Know-It-All whose "advice" is just her acting like she's come out the other side successfully,while really just telling other people what to do to deflect from her own problems?
  • It's all but stated that Diane genuinely loves Bojack and wants what's best for him, but refuses to admit it, both out of fear of enabling him and refusal to accept that, even if she's not obligated to make personal sacrifices to help him, she wants to. Despite refusing to help him any more after his incident on Philbert, she still drives him to rehab, which can be seen as both getting him out of her hair as well helping him by directing him to someone more capable of doing so. She also tells him that she was angry when she found out that he tried to commit suicide, which, while not the most compassionate thing to say to someone who'd just made a suicide attempt, is a very common reaction that friends of people who've done so are known to say.

Todd Chavez

• Todd sabotaging BoJack's chances at winning an Oscar may have been payback for BoJack ruining his Rock Opera. On the other hand, it was destined to fail, given Todd's track record.
  • When Todd tips away his newfound wealth in the Season 3 finale, was it really an accident/stupidity? Or did he intentionally do it, given how he has personally seen what a lot of money can do to people, including his best friend?

Mr. Peanutbutter

• Is Mr. Peanutbutter a genuinely kind (if stubborn and excitable) man working to make others happy who deals with a Jerkass like BoJack Horseman and an increasingly dissatisfied wife all while his own mortality hangs above his head? A passive-aggressive glory-hound who's just as selfish as BoJack but hides it better through PR? And how much of the failures you can call his past marriages could be put down to his own issues?

Beatrice Horseman

• Beatrice gets this, especially when we see her past and make note of some of her actions, which could suggest that she does love Bojack (i.e her watching Horsing Around, despite hating it and her, somewhat, acknowledging that she wasn't a good mother to him) but can't express it in a healthy way, which begs a question as to whether or not she's just a belligerent person or, like Bojack, she's a product of her circumstance. Similarly, one could ask if she mostly behaved the way she did towards Bojack because of her promise to her lobotomized mother and her bitter feelings towards her husband, Butterscotch.
  • On top of this, how accurate are her memories? Is she remembering everything detail-for-detail, or are some events (e.g. her father telling her "Your sickness has infected everything" in "Time's Arrow") the broad-strokes version?
  • In some vein, with the episode Free Churro, serving as this and an In-Universe version, was Beatrice really reading the ICU ward sign aloud or was she really acknowledging BoJack, as only she could in her dementia-addled mind and dying moments?. One could say that she was but her mental state had gone to the point as to where she herself couldn't tell, however, one could also say looking at the ICU sign because that was what she could fixate on or was she doing both? BoJack doesn't know either.

Butterscotch Horseman

• While Butterscotch is one of the biggest Hate Sinks in the show with little to explain his behavior, the one element he does give of his backstory — his mother died when he was young — raises some questions. Is the childhood trauma related to losing his mother one of the reasons he became such an abusive narcissist? And since he tells both Beatrice and Henrietta that they look like his mother while flirting with them, is he using them to fill some emotional void? On the other hand, Butterscotch could just be using the "dead mother" story for sympathy as we have no confirmation that it's true, which would make him look even more manipulative and callous.

Herb

• While Herb certainly got screwed over, both by 90's politics and his child Horsin' Around, and cancer, and peanuts, is he really as innocent and righteously angry when Bojack comes to visit him as he acts?
  • Herb doesn't seem to entertain the possibility that Bojack didn't want to sell him out but had no choice, and that the only reason he never reached out to Herb after was because he just assumed Herb wouldn't want to see him ever again. However, it's possible that he considers this, but doesn't care and feels that Bojack has no excuse to do anything but stand by him when the scandal happened. He also flip flops between saying that he only did Horsin' Around for money and calling it his baby, making a scrapbook of bad reviews and deliberately bringing it up when he and Bojack get into a scuffle at the end of "The Telescope." Does he really think Bojack was a bad friend who screwed him out of his showbiz career, or is he just jealous of a guy more successful than him when he knew that, morally right or wrong, it was still his choice to get drunk at that party have have public sex with another man?
    • The last season offers another option with the reveal that the station was totally bluffing, and Bojack really did have the power to save Herb's job. Given that they fell out of contact immediately afterwards, it's entirely possible that he was never aware Bojack didn't know that.
  • Or, does Herb see Bojack as representing the kind of homophobic Double Standard that killed his career (that Bojack, a straight person, had the privilege of a safe, private sex life while Herb's only options at the time were seedy hookups or nothing) and Bojack being complacent was just The Last Straw, even if it wasn't entirely his fault? And even if he realizes this, is Herb just taking out his anger on Bojack because he it's easier to do to his peer than on the network executives who fired him or the legions of homophobes who convinced them to do so?
  • Herb also kisses Bojack, then backpedals when he doesn't return Herb's affection. Herb probably felt that his only hope of getting a relationship was to make desperate gestures like this and hope for the best. This theory is supported during a flashback in season six when Herb, in an attempt to loosen up Bojack for his first on-screen kiss, tries to force himself on Bojack to show him how to "do it himself."
  • "The Telescope" shows that Herb's ego got just as out of control as Bojack's midway through his time on the show, but also that he recognized this and wanted to make peace with his friend before they pushed one another away for good. On the other hand, while threatening to leave the show to stand by his friend would certainly have been noble, Bojack would have risked getting blacklisted and never working again^note Analogous to when John Kricfalusi was fired from The Ren & Stimpy Show and tried to force Billy West to quit out of protest, to which West refused, both out of fear of blacklisting and not feeling any greater loyalty to Kricfalusi. Bojack only has only slightly more of a reason to be loyal to Herb. Did he feel entitled to Bojack's loyalty in the same way Bojack felt entitled to an accepted apology? Was rejecting Bojack's apology an act of sincere anger or, again, just a power move on the one person from whom he'd gain some sort of closure by taking his anger out on? He outright tells Bojack that he's not going to give him closure, so he knows that what he's doing is going to hurt him. His line "I'm not gonna give you closure!" could be read as "I'm intentionally denying you closure so you'll suffer."
  • Herb also first met Bojack heckling his standup before more or less asserting himself to the title of his mentor. And while he did end up helping Bojack's career, was it an act of compassion and camaraderie from one performer to another, or did he just want to boss around this Naïve Newcomer and use him to get ahead himself? "Still Broken" shows that Horsin' Around was about as good as his writing could get, so he probably had just as much trouble breaking into the biz as Bojack due to his lack of talent.
  • Their entire relationship takes on a whole new light if you make the interpretation that Herb was grooming Bojack, preying on his naïveté and then making his move once he was sure he'd earned enough brownie points for Bojack to return his affection. The friction that built up between them may have been just as much Bojack not returning Herb's advances as it was their respective egos getting too big. Does Herb view himself as a Dogged Nice Guy? As mentioned above, a flashback in season 6 shows Herb outright forcing himself on Bojack, allegedly to show him how to do a proper on-screen kiss.
  • Tellingly, one of the few overt bits of Character Development Bojack has experienced is accepting apologies, accepting when someone rejects his apologies and being more forthcoming with apologies himself. However, he also desperately craves positive reinforcement from the people he looks up to to make up for how little he got from his own parents. Did Bojack actually value his friendship with Herb and take their falling out especially seriously, or is Herb just one of several people whose abuse Bojack mistook for compassion?
  • With all this considered, is Herb as He Who Fights Monsters? Did he act like a pompous Control Freak to anyone or anything he could or did hold any sort of authority over as a way to take out his anger on people who had an unfair control over his fate and only respond positively to the people who didn't call him out on it?
  • His reasons for returning BoJack's call, telling the "asshole" to come to Malibu if he wants to talk rather than leave a voicemail. BoJack himself already knows the meeting won't go well, though there is a brief Hope Spot that he and Herb can part amicably. Was Herb wanting a reason to call out BoJack for abandoning him in his time of need? Did he need closure, while refusing to give it to BoJack? Perhaps he was as hopeful that his protege and former best friend could deliver answers.

Flip

• Is Flip a Giftedly Bad writer who's deeply personal work just happens to include a lot of naked women, or did he just "fail upwards" into a showbiz career and is using it as an excuse to treat actors like his play things? The first episode of season 5 seems to make it ambiguous just how much he's putting in his show to spite Bojack and/or control Gina and how much of it is Bojack projecting. Later, he tells the camera man, with an intrigued grin, to continue filming when Bojack nearly chokes Gina to death. Is he trying to capture some Enforced Method Acting and work it into his passion project, or is it something more insidious?

Hollyhock

• The content of Hollyhock's letter.
  • Was it a "Dear John" Letter cutting ties with Bojack for good or was it more like an ultimatum that Bojack didn't realize he wasn't respecting until it was too late?
  • Did Hollyhock change her number so Bojack would stop calling her or because she didn't want anything to do with him once his controversies went public? Did Pete Repeat telling Hollyhock about the Penny incident have anything to do with it (assuming he told her at all, since it's only implied that he did)?

Sarah Lynn

• Sarah Lynn invites a bit when it's revealed that, no matter how drunk or high that she got, she stayed in contact with Herb despite him getting blacklisted from Hollywood. Was Herb the only adult she felt she could truly trust, given her parents were less than stellar role models, and BoJack was his usual unhelpful self? Or could it be that she was rebelling against the system by hanging out with a gay man? Notably, he's one of the few that never gave up on her, encouraging Sarah Lynn to go to rehab, take care of her body, and be happy.
• Did Sarah Lynn go sober solely for the sake of a better high down the line as she originally claimed? Or did she secretly hope that she could finally keep her sobriety up permanently (perhaps only after starting her break for the sake of a better high, then keeping at it for longer than she'd expected)? "That's Too Much, Man!" provides some evidence for the latter idea, as she seems quite happy and proud of her sobriety, even in a house stashed with drugs, and makes a point to get her AA chip. However, she jumps at the chance to binge with BoJack again and her sobriety calendar comes down very quickly so she can access booze — though she could have set this all up before she decided to keep being sober. It's also made ambiguous how sober she actually was at said meetings, given she claims not being drunk isn't part of the twelve step plan, though given this was after she'd begun her bender, she could have just been making excuses.

Biscuit

• Biscuits' motivation for grilling BoJack during his second interview. Was she just stoking the flames to get more ratings and attention for her show based on secondhand information? Or was she legitimately offended as a woman and trying to bring him to justice?
  • Biscuits also had the sense to confront BoJack when she had a source and evidence, courtesy of the police phone records, Dr. Champ, and Paige. Once she reveals the smoking gun— the seventeen-minute wait between phone calls— she then notes that he's looking to Princess Carolyn for guidance, and brings up that he and Princess Carolyn dated while she was an agent's assistant. Biscuits also acknowledges how wonderful Princess Carolyn is before further grilling BoJack about the women he dated. Was it just manipulation to paint her picture, or a case of Cruel to Be Kind and indirectly asking Princess Carolyn why she keeps sticking her neck out for a guy that manipulated her into an unhappy relationship.

General/Other

• In general, whenever the characters pontificate about life with convoluted metaphors, are they accurately assigning words to the exact way that they understand ideas and feelings, are they trying and failing to do so, just completely full of crap and trying to sound like they have life figured out when they clearly don't, or is it just the writers putting their own words in the characters' mouths? Perhaps some combination of all four?
• In-Universe: Todd believes that the cop from the movie Die Hard and the dad from Family Matters are the same person. It's just that the cop went into witness protection after the events of the first two Die Hard films.
• As shown in this video, even a character as loathsome as Joseph Sugarman can be subject to interpretation. For example, lobotomies were seen as a cutting-edge medical treatment in the 1940s and 50s, not a cruel form of brain damage, and in "Time's Arrow", he is shown telling his wife Honey if he knew she would become an Empty Shell because of the treatment, he wouldn't have put her through it. Even when he burns Beatrice's baby doll, the event that would traumatize her for the rest of her life, it's clear to the audience that he had to do it to protect the household from scarlet fever, as Beatrice bringing the doll everywhere could potentially expose others to the deadly disease. Is he truly heartless, or can some of his horrible actions and attitudes be chalked up to Values Dissonance?
• When Max confesses his love for Paige, she responds with "Everyone loves me... I'm Paige Sinclair!" Was she oblivious to what he meant? Or was she trying to let him down gently?

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