Characters / Bojack Horseman - Beatrice Horseman

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Beatrice Elizabeth Horseman (née Sugarman)

Don't sit too close to the T.V. It'll make you cruel.

^{In her old age}

^{In her middle age}

^{As a young adult}

^{As a child}

Voiced by: Wendie Malick

Debut: "BoJack Hates The Troops"

"Here's your omelette. I'm sorry it's not as good as the omelets your secretary makes, but then you're not married to your secretary, are you?"

BoJack's mother. A wealthy heiress who, along with BoJack's father, is much of the reason that BoJack is so screwed up.

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A-E

• Abusive Parents: She was dismissive, manipulative, and even violent towards young BoJack. This continues even into his adulthood, with her dismissing him as a "clown" and openly blaming him for ruining her life by the mere fact of his birth. BoJack even claimed that she tried to drown him in a bathtub when he was 22.
• Accidental Misnaming: In Season 4, due to her dementia she constantly refers to BoJack as "Henrietta", which is the name of her former maid.
• Affectionate Nickname:
  • Her brother, husband and son sometimes call her "Bea".
  • Hollyhock calls her "Grammy Gram".
• Age-Appropriate Angst: "Time's Arrow" reveals the catalyst for her lifelong misery turned out to be a traumatic childhood memory involving her father burning all her things due to her scarlet fever, including her "baby" doll, right in front of her.
• Alcoholic Parent: She consumed alcohol as much as her precious smokes to cope with her misery, which proved to be a bad influence on BoJack.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Part of what initially drew her to Butterscotch was his rugged good looks, disregard for high society niceties, and rebelliousness towards authority. He did crash her debutante ball, after all.
• Amnesiacs are Innocent: Losing her memories due to senile dementia has allowed Beatrice to show a kinder, less toxic side of her; she's at worst snarky during BoJack's and Hollyhock's visit and never reaches the levels of cruel condescension she usually showed to BoJack. MASSIVELY averted by the end of season 4, when it's revealed she's been secretly drugging Hollyhock with amphetamines.
• Analogy Backfire: When an adult BoJack reasonably asks why she and Butterscotch don't just divorce, she snarls that that may be the Hollywood way, and rattles off a few examples of frivolous divorces... only to stumble on a good reason. They actually didn't because of The Masochism Tango.
  BoJack: I don't understand why you two don't just get a divorce.
  Beatrice: Oh, sure, that's the Hollywood way! "We're out of mustard. Let's get a divorce!" "I'm a little sad. Divorce!" "We've grown apart over the years and our adult child has moved out of the house and there's no reason for us to stay together. Divorce!"
  BoJack: That actually is a legitimate reason to get a divorce.
• Anti-Villain: Chronologically, she goes from the daughter of a rich family to a Tragic Villain after a rough life. Series-wise, she starts off as an unsympathetic Abusive Mom before flashbacks contextualizing her actions and personality make her a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds. None of her terrible experiences are used to condone any of her actions, they just explain why she ended up that way.
• Arch-Enemy: To Clemelia Bloodsworth. From an early age, neither girl liked each other, with Clemelia frequently antagonizing Beatrice during playground hours and Beatrice eventually responding in kind as grown-ups. She represents everything Beatrice is not and hates about her peers (and what she eventually becomes).
• Ascended Extra: While she was an important character in the first three seasons, she only appeared in a spare amount of episodes via flashbacks and only made one present appearance in season 2. In season 4, Beatrice's screen-time increases.
• Asshole Victim: At the end of season 4, BoJack coldly kicks Beatrice out of his house and drives her to a Bleak Abyss Retirement Home specifically chosen to be the worst one he could find. But she was just found out to have secretly drugged Hollyhock's coffee for months so that she'd lose weight, which nearly kills Hollyhock, so it's not hard to say she had it coming.
• Baby Factory: Her father Joseph expected her to marry a "good man from Columbia" during her college years, and tried to marry her of. She's not keen in becoming elite breeding livestock, so she proceeds to rebel in any way she can - which ends up leading to an unexpected pregnancy and a miserable marriage.
• Beauty Is Bad: Falls into this with her blonde, luscious braids, fine upper crust heritage and remarkable cadence in her voice. Even in old age, she's still willing to stroke her ego by keeping herself as good looking as possible. She's still a terrible person and abusive mother.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: As a young mare, she openly disparaged the vacuous, snobby, image-obsessed Idle Rich lifestyle she was born into. After eloping with Butterscotch and getting a taste of the commoner's life she once romanticized, she found she couldn't cope without the luxuries she was accustomed to and couldn't wait to get it back.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: After eloping with Butterscotch, Beatrice learned the hard way that living in poverty wasn't as fun as reading about it. The once fierce activist determined to overthrow the "garish" disparity of wealth in the country couldn't wait to get her husband to accept a corner office job in her father's company so she could get back the Idle Rich lifestyle she once denounced.
• Betty and Veronica: The "Archie" for Butterscotch's roguish, bad boyish "Veronica" and Corbin Creamerman's friendly, nervous "Betty". She chooses Butterscotch because he got her pregnant and regrets it dearly.
• Beyond Redemption: Zig-zagged. Beatrice is never shown to be anything but a horrible, abusive mother until she develops dementia, after which she becomes a nicer (if still grumpy) Granny Classic. Then she admits to lacing Hollyhock's coffee with amphetamines for months despite her senility, which makes BoJack realize there's no hope for her. Only when he's already taken her to a Bleak Abyss Retirement Home does she become lucid enough to remember his name — the ensuing episode, "Time's Arrow", then explains how Beatrice got so screwed up, recontextualizing her as a Troubled Abuser with decades-old trauma. In death, her last words could either have been "I see you" or "ICU", and how much sympathy we're meant to have for her remains uncertain to the end.
• Blue Blood: Daughter of one of the most well-heeled families. She loses her riches after marrying a commoner.
• Bonding over Missing Parents: She and Butterscotch bonded over lost mothers; a lobotomy in her case and death in the latter's.
• Bookworm: Almost every flashback in Time’s Arrow shows her with a book (from early childhood all the way into her geriatric years), even though she was discouraged from reading for being a girl. When her father sent her to college for her MRS Degree, she got an actual Bachelor's degree instead. Part of what drew her to Butterscotch in the first place was that he was an aspiring novelist.
• Broken Ace: An intelligent woman with enough opportunities in life, a whiplash of a wit and unexploited talent... whose backstory involved coming face to face with the institutionalized misogyny of society in the treatment and fall of her mother, the death of her brother and the knowledge that her worst enemy came in the form of her father; then, after getting her life back on track, it was derailed once again by an unexpected pregnancy, an unhappy marriage with a deluded, prideful man she eventually came to despise as well as her offspring, resulting in the biggest disgrace of all; being cuckolded with the maid, resulting in yet another pregnancy.
• Broken Hero: Subverted. Beatrice tried to break away from her chains and remain a decent person in spite of her traumas. As history proves, she failed spectacularly.
• Burn Baby Burn: Beatrice's toys, including her baby doll, her most beloved possession, were burned in her bedroom's fireplace to keep her scarlet fever quarantined. Her traumatic memories of it melting in the fire and her father's callousness toward her feelings of despair led Beatrice to refuse to abort BoJack.
• Calling the Old Man Out: To Joseph in her young adult years. She returned from college a young and beautiful intellectual who found her lifestyle trivial. When Joseph tries to force her to "fit in" during her debutante ball, she lashes out, questioning everything about his advertising, callousness about selling her as a honorary Baby Factory through a thinly veiled Arranged Marriage and his elitist condescendence. His frustrated resignation implies this isn't the first time they've had this conversation.
• Can't Live with Them, Can't Live Without Them: At Butterscotch's funeral, all she said was, "My husband is dead, and everything is worse now." BoJack isn't sure if it's because of The Masochism Tango they formed, or if it's because Butterscotch left her in so much debt upon his death that she had to sell the house and move into a retirement home.
• Cerebus Retcon: Her awful personality is shaped by her mother getting a lobotomy after the death of her brother in World War II, and her father cheerfully threatening to do the same to her if she ever let her "womanly emotions" get the better of her too.
• Cheerful Child: During her childhood. She doesn't stay that way for long.
• Character Death: A combination of old age and dementia take their toll in Season 5, ultimately claiming Beatrice's life at the age of 80.
• Character Development: Beatrice has gone through a rather shameful journey.
  • Starting as a filly, Beatrice was innocent, though naïve and trusting of her father's misogyny and her mother's repressed acceptance of it. Once her brother Crackerjack dies and Honey is lobotomized, Beatrice is exposed to the cruelness of the world, destroying her innocence, in addition to being left in the care of Joseph, the root of her predicament.
  • As a debutante, Bea's knowledge of the world has expanded and she has now acquired much needed sarcasm to deal with the idiocy of those around her, hoping for something better. In spite of this, she's not above stupid impulses and it's the suppression of these and desire to rebel which makes her possible future crumble.
  • As a middle-age woman, she has discarded much of her previously held idealism and is a supremely bitter elitist at heart, bringing down whoever decides to remind her of her rotten luck. Concerned with wealth whereas she had previously rejected it, she obsesses over what could have been if she had chosen a different life.
  • As an elder, she's slowly falling apart and regretful of most of her actions, even if she can't admit it to herself or others. In trying to make amends, she reveals herself to be utterly incapable of it, dooming her to fade to oblivion while everyone else struggles with her debris.
  • In her last stage of dementia, she has now become as innocent as she used to be, albeit with her snark intact, even if she's now as helpless as a child. Of course, her innocence just makes her more susceptible to the bad advice she was given as a child, which shows her as a product of her environment; someone who once had potential and was tainted by life in the process.
• The Chain of Harm: She is very guilty of perpetuating this, on many levels.
  • Ordered BoJack never to cry when he was a colt, because her own father ordered her never to cry when she was a filly and threatened to lobotomize her like her mother if she ever disobeyed.
  • Decided to be Cruel to Be Kind by taking Henrietta's baby from her "for [her] own good" just like the time her father took her baby doll and burned it "for [her] own good" when she was a child.
  • Was a terrible mother to BoJack (cruel and aloof) because she saw her mother fall apart and get a lobotomy from grief for loving her brother CrackerJack too much, and wanted to prevent that trauma from ever happening to herself.
  • Criticized Hollyhock's weight and spiked her coffee with weight loss amphetamines due to her father and peers criticizing her weight as a child and pressuring her to stay thin as possible.
• Commonality Connection:
  • Stuck in a lavish, yet vacuous lifestyle, Beatrice was drawn to the rough-and-tumble Butterscotch because he was a countercultural rebel who, like her, had read the Beats, had an independent way of thinking, and of course, crashed her party and boasted about it.
  • She started to come around to her Abhorrent Admirer yet Amazon Chaser Corbin Creamerman when he revealed that he had greater dreams for his life than what his overbearing father wanted for him, which she could relate to. Then she learned she was pregnant from her one-night stand with Butterscotch.
• Companion Cube: She becomes attached to another horse doll after she succumbs to dementia, to the point that she views it as her "baby" akin to the horse doll she had as a child. She can't bear to be away from it.
• Crapsack Only by Comparison: Beatrice disliked living in a normal house, despite it being lower middle-class, having been raised in a much more luxurious home. Even after gaining some of her wealth back due to Butterscotch's job at Sugarman West, she still thinks it's unacceptable.
• Cruel to Be Kind: Beatrice decides to pay Henrietta's way through medical school on the terms that she is to give Hollyhock up for adoption. Beatrice even goes as far as to refuse to let Henrietta hold her baby after the birth because she knows Henrietta will get attached and back out at the last minute. While cruel, it's all to protect Henrietta from going through what Beatrice went through. It is, in her own twisted way, the kindest thing we ever see Beatrice do.
• Damned by Faint Praise: Or the closest thing to "praise" someone like Beatrice can give, anyway. After BoJack invites her to a live taping of Horsin' Around, all she can bring herself to say is, "Well, it wasn't Ibsen." Inverted ("Praised by Faint Damning") when it's revealed that Beatrice secretly likes the show, but feels she shouldn't. The fact that someone as brutally honest as Beatrice can't think of anything insulting to say beyond "it wasn't Ibsen" foreshadowed that she liked the show more than she was willing to admit.
• Dark Lord on Life Support: When she returns in season 4, Beatrice has been confined to a wheelchair and is suffering from dementia. There's something darkly comedic and tragic about BoJack being tortured by a frail old lady who is nothing more than a shadow of the cruel woman she used to be.
• Dating What Daddy Hates: Agreed to sneak off from her debutante ball for a romp with Butterscotch because he convinced her it'd piss off her dad. Then reality ensued.
• Deadpan Snarker: It's quite easy to see where BoJack got his condescending attitude and hurtful snark from — Beatrice reacts to most things with mean-spirited sarcasm delivered in a cutting tone. One could even call it a deconstruction, as her being so snippy and sarcastic towards Butterscotch and then Bojack only helped the relationships worsen.
• Death by Irony: One of the incidents that led to Beatrice becoming who she is was her mother getting part of her brain cut out. Before Honey lost what was left of her personality, she made Beatrice promise her she wouldn't love someone as much as she did CrackerJack, and Beatrice ended up fulfilling that promise in the worst possible way. Despite her efforts to not end up like her mother, she is now dying of an illness degenerating her brain, and she's losing her sense of self to the disease, much like her mother lost her sense of self to the lobotomy.
• Death of Personality: Zigzagged. By season 4, the onset of her dementia has reduced her mindset to nothing more than a snarky version of Granny Classic, being incapable of remembering who she was or those she used to know. This produces mixed feelings for BoJack; on one hand, he's not sad that she's losing her mind, given how she's treated him all his life; on the other, there's no satisfaction, since she can no longer recognize him and clearly doesn't know what to feel guilty about. Dementia also leads Beatrice to being much, much kinder and harmless than usual, with her maternal side popping up with a doll and Hollyhock, which drives BoJack mad. That being said, she still experiences brief moments of lucidity and her true colors haven't disappeared, they've just been filtered through her messed up mind. Especially the diet pills she used to drug Hollyhock...
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of the frustrated wealthy socialite forced to live through common people's customs. Because she overly romanticized the bohemian lifestyle, she entered it without much thought and was thus miserable.
• Defiled Forever: She declares herself a "ruined woman" after finding out her romp with Butterscotch has resulted in pregnancy. Letting aside the problems with being a single mother, she can no longer hope to get married to Corbin Creamerman. Not to say of what her father will say when he finds out. Butterscotch stops her train of thought and simply uses an analogy to propose to her, with both knitting a fantasy of their life together.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: At first, she wasn't a fan of Corbin Creamerman at all because of his awkward, dorky personality. However, she eventually realized that he isn't a bad guy at all and that they have quite a few things in-common... and right after she started to like him, she found out that she is pregnant with BoJack by throwing up on Corbin.
• Deliberately Bad Example: In-Universe and out, she represents this to BoJack. Alongside Butterscotch, Beatrice is an example of what a selfish, toxic version of BoJack would be, and the direction his life could take if he chooses to let his demons consume him.
• Didn't Think This Through: After having a one-night stand with Butterscotch and getting pregnant, Beatrice had several options - abort the baby, marry Butterscotch, marry Corbin and beg him to claim he's the father, or cover up the abortion. With abortion off the table due to her trauma of her baby doll being burned when she caught scarlet fever as a child, Beatrice chose to keep the foal and marry Butterscotch thinking it would give her happiness and freedom. She and Butterscotch found out the hard way they weren't ready to be parents. Corbin at least may have ensured Beatrice could maintain her standard of living and - given what we have seen of his character - encourage her to have unofficial power on his family's company. It wouldn't be the first case, anyway....
• Disapproving Look: Her default face. FOR. EVERYTHING. ANYONE. WOULD. DO.
• Dismissing a Compliment: Frequently, especially when such complements came from little BoJack himself. A notable example occurs when BoJack is filming an episode of Horsin' Around and Beatrice pulls no stops in pretending to give him some compliments, only to backpedal and berate everything he's done so far.
• Dreary Half-Lidded Eyes: Her standard expression paired with Exhausted Eyebags throughout the rest of her life after becoming a mother, showcasing how jaded and bitter she became. Contrasted with her having slightly wider eyes as a young adult when she was more idealistic.
• Dying as Yourself: Subverted. At her funeral, BoJack reflects that she seemed to have a brief moment of clarity and said "I see you" to him as she died. Then, on reflection, he remembers they were in the Intensive Care Unit and she was just reading the sign "I C U" on the wall behind him.
• Establishing Character Moment: Beatrice's first appearance happens in "BoJack Hates the Troops" during a Flashback: she serves Butterscotch his breakfast omelet by tossing it at him while subtly guilt-tripping him by demeaning her own cooking, before outright accusing him in a passive-aggressive tone that the omelet "is not as good as the ones made by [his] secretary" while reminding him they're married, all with a dismissive tone and in front of little BoJack, whom she barely notices. Then, he calls attention to himself, asking for an omelet as well. Beatrice dryly admits he's the birthday boy after all and goes back to cooking. Mood-Swinger Evil Matriarch with a severe Lack of Empathy.... seems about right.
• Every Proper Lady Should Curtsy: She does it fairly well in her debutante ball, even if her attitude indicates her disdain for the move. When Butterscotch calls her curtsy "atrocious", she just laughs.
• Evil Old Folks: Downplayed. She has mellowed out with age, but she hasn't stopped being toxic. In Season 4 she now has dementia and has mellowed out even more as a result, especially towards Hollyhock, though she'll still make the occasional insult, usually towards “Henrietta” (in reality BoJack). This goes south fast after she starts drugging Hollyhock to "help" her lose weight.
• Exhausted Eyebags: Her eyes were larger and more expressive as a young adult. Her eyes get smaller and her eyebags get steadily bigger as she ages, representing her growing more jaded and being shut off from the world.

F-L

• Former Teen Rebel: Former activist in-training, former idealist, and former Non-Idle Rich. Alas, all those dreams died once she became a wife and mother. Although what really bothers her was never using her skills to such ends, instead wasting away her intellect in a culturally dead end lifestyle.
• Freudian Excuse: Season 4 shows us what her life was like growing up, with "The Old Sugarman Place" and "Time's Arrow" expanding on it. The loss of her brother and mother and her father being sexist and restrictive, coupled with her impulsive hookup with Butterscotch, ended up turning her into a miserable woman.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: While her backstory episodes make her sympathetic, they also show that nothing was so bad that she had to turn into such a bitter, evil, vindictive woman. And indeed, the majority of her behavior towards Bojack has no roots in her own terrible treatment.
• Furry Reminder:
  • The performance Beatrice puts on at her debutante ball has her jumping over hurdles and trotting as though she's in a horse jumping competition. Just to cap off the effect, she blows delicately as she does. It's also pretty much a Take That!/Visual Pun on how women were being sold like cattle during those balls.
  • When we see her in old age, she gets cataracts, turning her eyes from the standard black to something of a greenish hue, which is something that happens with aged/ing horses.
• Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Although she's far from being nice, she refused to abort BoJack, due to the trauma of her baby doll being taken from her by her father and burned when she had scarlet fever as a child. While she does encourage Henrietta not to keep her daughter, she does still have her carry Hollyhock to term and give her up for adoption.
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: Bad smoking. She's seen smoking in Flashbacks and she's a horrible mother to BoJack in every single one of them. Tellingly, one of the only times she doesn't have a cigarette in her mouth is in the present, when she's apologizing to BoJack.
• Granny Classic: In a twisted way, yes. Beatrice's inability to care for herself and remember anything related to her past for long periods of time surprisingly mellows her out, to the point of being a decent grandmother to Hollyhock and even a nurturing mother to a plastic doll. This doesn't sit well with BoJack, who remembers Beatrice way too well to believe her change for even a minute, much less humoring her sickness or let anyone believe this is how she always was. And he's right. Beatrice turns out to have been drugging Hollyhock's coffee for months on end, and is only found out when the girl nearly dies from an amphetamine overdose.
• Guilty Pleasures: Season 4 reveals that Beatrice secretly liked Horsin' Around more than she let on; openly admitting that that's the show her son is on, and joyously laughing at every line. She just felt she shouldn't like it since it wasn't up to the high standards her classical tastes and education dictated she should enjoy, nor the impossibly high standards she felt BoJack should aspire to after all the "sacrifice" she put in to raise him.
• Hairstyle Inertia: Ever since she was a little girl Beatrice’s hair has been worn in the exact same curled/braided style, up until she succumbs to dementia, where her curls appear undone and thinner likely due to old age and her being too frail to keep up with it.
• Hates Small Talk: Beatrice would prefer to talk about important issues and things that stimulate the mind and critical thinking, not just about any kind of event.
• Heel Realization:
  • A flashback in "Time's Arrow" implied she realized she was pushing her son away after she berated him like usual and he curtly replied, "Thanks for the painting. It'll be nice to always have this conversation," only for the most traumatic memories of her life to come flooding back, causing her to numb herself with a deep drag of her cigarette to keep the damn from bursting. She never reconciled with her son.
  • After reading BoJack's memoirs, she calls him up to apologize for being a horrible parent, although she blames it on the fact that he was genetically predestined to be a miserable wreck.
• Hidden Depths: For all her flaws, season four reveals that she was very intelligent. She even graduated from Barnard College, even though her misogynistic father only sent her there to find a husband.
• High-Class Gloves: Young socialite Beatrice wears a pair of white wrist gloves with her normal outfit, and she wears elbow length ones with her debutante outfit.
• History Repeats: She ended up becoming a miserable person after having a horrible childhood. Her abuse of BoJack during his childhood is a big part his own misery.
• Hollywood Pudgy: As a little girl, Beatrice was bullied for being "fat", despite looking just a little chubby, which is perfectly normal for her age. She protested to her bullies that her father told her she was just growing, although later on he shows optimism that her throat being nearly swollen shut from her scarlet fever could help her lose weight. Incidents like this lead Beatrice to develop Weight Woe that continues into young adulthood, as she relies on over the counter "pretty pills" to keep her slim figure, and laments that child birth ruined her body.
• Hope Crusher: Ironic considering her name; Beatrice herself had seen her dreams die slowly through the years, so this gave her justification enough to destroy her husband's and son's as well.
• Housewife: Reduced to this later in life, after marrying Butterscotch and having BoJack, much to her displeasure, as this title is exactly what her father and society wanted her to be, and what she originally strived to avoid. Of course, she still had a grip on those unfortunate enough to enter her reach.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: From daughter of the Sugarman Family ⇒ the only successor of the family ⇒ one of the most desired debutantes of her time ⇒ a disgraced pregnant woman ⇒ an unsatisfied housewife ⇒ an old woman with a lot of regrets ⇒ a senile old woman without any riches, loved ones and with an increasingly tenuous grasp on reality.
• Idiot Houdini: The reason why Beatrice is never punished for accidentally poisoning Hollyhock and making BoJack's childhood and life miserable? She's suffering from dementia and as such there's no point in trying to pin the blame on her, since she doesn't even remember doing half of those things. Her decaying mind is punishment enough. BoJack does find the absolute worst room in a retirement home he can for her instead of caring for at home after he finds out what she did to Hollyhock, though.
• Idle Rich: After growing up, she settled into living off Butterscotch's six-figure salary. Having your spirit broken by life'll do that to you.
• I Have No Son!: After a faulty choir solo in school, Beatrice pretended not to know BoJack, much less taking him home after the presentation. This almost led BoJack to have a Near-Rape Experience when the pianist he carpooled with tried to touch him. When BoJack made it home unscathed, Beatrice replied "Huh. I guess no one wants you."
• Impoverished Patrician: After running off with Butterscotch, Beatrice — a former heiress — is reduced to living in an average looking lower middle class house on a working class salary. Butterscotch does eventually accept a job offer from Joseph, which eases things a bit and Beatrice is able to spruce up the place to her standards. But BoJack reveals in Season 5 that Butterscotch frittered away the last of her inheritance and left her in crippling debt after his death, forcing her to sell the house and her fancy jewelry and move into a retirement home, which is where she lives when the series proper begins.
• Indifferent Beauty: Growing up, Beatrice was quite beautiful, but she doesn't appear to have put much stock into it; for example, she rolls her eyes when Corbin tells her she “looks nice” for the hundredth time.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: Beatrice made others feel miserable and inferior because she herself was miserable and felt inferior.
• Informed Deformity: She has complained about having lost her beauty after having BoJack, but she never looks any worse for wear other than a few wrinkles.
• Innocence Lost: Beatrice's childhood happened in the middle of World War I. Her brother died in the war, and her father had her grieving mother lobotomized, exposing her to the cruelty of the world at a young age.
• Intelligence Equals Isolation: Returning from university with a Bachelor's Degree instead of a bachelor like her father wanted left her intellectually unfulfilled in her shallow high society life. This drew her to the seemingly subversive ideas of aspiring writer Butterscotch Horseman. Part of why she's so bitter in the present is that she feels she's Surrounded by Idiots, unable to engage in intellectually stimulating conversations with anyone.
• Ironic Last Words: BoJack goes through the ringer trying to figure them out in "Free Churro". According to BoJack, Beatrice's last words were "I see you." He spends a good part of his speech at her funeral wondering what she could have meant by that, and how only at the very end of her life did she finally acknowledge BoJack for what he was. However, during the same speech, he realizes that they were in the intensive care unit of the hospital, so it was more like "ICU." He's incredulous that, even in death, she wouldn't give him one bit of what he'd always wanted from her.
• Ironic Name: "Beatrice" comes from Latin, meaning bringer of joy.
• It's All About Me: Beatrice is incredibly self-centered and raised BoJack only to make up for the pain she went through. This also ruins her personal relationships; she's too self-absorbed and convinced by her own lies to make a change.
• It's the Principle of the Thing: She frequently complains that her body and beauty were ruined because of BoJack's birth. There's nothing truly wrong with her, it's just that from her perspective, she has been Defiled Forever and so she sees herself as "ruined" no matter what.
• I Was Quite a Looker: She was a lovely debutante in her youth, and bitter about how she looks now, and uses it to guilt her young son. "You know, I was beautiful before I got pregnant."
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • As soul crushing and full of despair as her speech about emptiness is for BoJack in "Brand New Couch", Beatrice is correct in pointing out that no matter how he tries to fill the void with projects and girlfriends, they're just band aids over the wound, even if her mindset points toward resigning rather than try to make a break out of it.
  • When Butterscotch tries to deflect blame for Henrietta's pregnancy as Beatrice's fault for not "fulfilling her wifely duties", Beatrice rightfully calls him out on this not being a real excuse for his infidelity.
  • She bemoans that Henrietta's weeping over her dire situation after getting pregnant with Hollyhock and not having any other prospectives to raise her desired baby leaves her with not a lot of choices isn't gonna do her any favors. She's as insensitive as usual, but she's not wrong. She also calls out her decision to raise the baby by herself foolish as she has seen in the flesh how such ideal doesn't hold up and will lead her to act bitter and self-centered toward her child.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Mostly. Beatrice's wealthy upbringing and haughty demeanor are just the icing on the cake. She's got a tight grip on Butterscotch, knowing exactly where to hurt his ego and talks quite openly about things that would be better be kept under wraps in front of the kids. Manipulative also doesn't even begin to describe her attitude towards other people's feelings. Also, the few times she had the opportunity to show a little compassion, she bared her heart of tin. For example, she makes BoJack a birthday breakfast...which just consists of an omelet she already made because he asked her. This was after having a verbal sparring with Butterscotch.
• Kick the Morality Pet: She genuinely appears to get on with Hollyhock, to BoJack's concern (as she'd never been anything but cruel to him) but then poisons Hollyhock's coffee with weight loss drugs because of her belief of her needing to lose weight. Once BoJack finds out, he abandons all pretenses of wanting to reconcile with his mother and sticks her in the worst nursing home he could find.
• Lady Drunk: Oh, yes. She really enjoys it.
• Laughably Evil: Sometimes, her abuse of BoJack is played for laughs.
• A Lighter Shade of Gray: Initially. She was a sass-mouth in her younger years but miles more decent than Clamelia Bloodsworth, whom she despised.
• Lonely Rich Kid: A flashback to her days in private school as a little girl show that she was quite an outcast, being bullied by other girls, specifically Clemilia Bloodsworth and her "gaggle", for being "fat", and apparently because she came from a more prestigious family than Beatrice.
• Loss of Identity: Gradually between Season 2 and Season 4, as befits a dementia-riddled old woman. By the time BoJack and Hollyhock visit her, she hardly bears any resemblance to the toxic woman she used to be.
• Loving a Shadow: Strange maternal example. In Season 4 the now-senile Beatrice becomes very smitten with a doll that she thinks is a "baby," coddling and cooing over it, which BoJack finds quite offensive since she was never that affectionate with him. We find out in a late season four flashback episode that her father threw her dolly, which she considered her "baby," in the fire when she was a little girl. When she got pregnant with BoJack, she refused to give up her baby because she was scarred from losing her doll. However, reality ensued when she endured the pain of childbirth and learned the hard way that real babies are crying, screaming, fussy work. It seems Beatrice loved the idea of having a baby, but only as long as it's as quiet and needless as a doll. The real thing will never measure up.

M-Y

• The Masochism Tango: Her entire relationship with Butterscotch. They're miserable together but neither of them would allow the other to be happy any other way but theirs. Woe may befall them if they found out any signs of disruption or soul-searching elsewhere. The least said about their toxic co-dependence and influence, the better.
• Maternally Challenged: She wasn't the best mom, to say the least.
• The Mirror Shows Your True Self: In her mind, a younger Beatrice still sees her current day self reflected back in mirrors.
• Misplaced Retribution: Got your life ruined by your brother's death, your mother's lobotomy, your father's dismissal of you as anything other than a placeholder and your husband's pride forcing you to live like a peasant? Blame it on the closest victim you've got - that little foal you gave birth to!
• Mock Millionaire: While she retained her family's money via Butterscotch's cushy office job for Sugarman West (and later after her father passes), Beatrice still lost some of her social standing as a socialite by marrying Butterscotch. Nonetheless she would always made a big deal of her status as Old Money to her friends whenever they'd encounter at social gatherings. She would even make little BoJack sing for them "The Lollipop Song" to keep up appearances, guilt-tripping him to act by way of emotional blackmail.
• More Deadly Than the Male: And more intelligent and savvier and cruel: Butterscotch might have been The Patriarch of the Horseman family, but it's clear that all Beatrice needed to bend him to her will was use a few cruel words, point out how he was fucking up in a way he wouldn't be able to offer a rebuttal and wait for his common sense to trump his pride as he slowly withered away. She also had a grasp on how things worked and her tongue only sharpened year after year. It says something that out of the two, Beatrice is the one corrupting influence that BoJack is unable to let go of and the one mainly keeping him from progressing.
• Morning Sickness: How Beatrice was clued into realizing that apparently innocent sex-capade with that scoundrel Butterscotch hit bullseye. Shame it was during a morning stroll with Corbin and just as Beatrice was starting to see him in a new light.
• MRS Degree: Joseph Sugarman is not shy about expressing his disappointment in Beatrice for actually graduating from Barnard University, name dropping marrying a good Ivy League man as his preferred outcome.
• Must Have Nicotine: Every time she's shown, she has a cigarette in her mouth and she's rarely (if ever) seen without it. She doesn't have one anymore in the present.
• My Life Flashed Before My Eyes: The entire Framing Device of "Time's Arrow". As Beatrice is being driven by BoJack to the last nursing home she'll ever reside in (and the worst he could find, nonetheless), Beatrice's mind drifts into a recount of her own life to clarify How We Got Here (and because of her dementia).
• Never My Fault: Although she ended up in a bad position simply out of rotten luck, that's still no justification for redirecting the hatred to her young son, no matter how many times she excuses it as "ensuring the mistake is repaired". Season 4 implies that she can't accept blame or learn to improve herself because that would mean facing all the damage that's been done to herself and her family.
• Nightmare Face: She makes a very scary face in "Stupid Piece of Sh*t", screaming in horror because BoJack had thrown a "baby" (actually a doll) off his balcony to spite her.
  • BoJack reveals in "Free Churro” that her corpse's face is pretty ghoulish, as the coroner couldn’t get her eyes shut not did Beatrice die quietly or gently.
• Non-Action Big Bad: Despite being the Arc Villain for BoJack in season 4, Beatrice never really has any influence on anyone or does anything truly horrible besides accidentally poisoning Hollyhock. The true antagonist is BoJack's memories of her and how her presence affects him one way or the other.
• Non-Idle Rich: As a young mare, Beatrice was more interested in social causes and the upcoming women's rights movement than any alternatives her empty life could offer. Come adulthood, it didn't take long for her to become the opposite.
• Not Quite the Right Thing: Played for Drama. "Time's Arrow" reveals that this is how she handled the birth of BoJack and Hollyhock. When she was a little filly, her father callously ripped her doll from her arms and threw it in the fire due to her Scarlet Fever. Being a little girl, she felt just as devastated as if he'd killed her actual baby. When she got pregnant with BoJack, she chose to keep him because she feared that losing this baby would hurt as much as losing her first "baby." When Beatrice's maid Henrietta became pregnant with Butterscotch's baby and considered keeping her, Beatrice projected her own disappointment in keeping BoJack onto Henrietta and coerced her into putting her baby up for adoption. In both cases Beatrice meant well, but it wasn't quite the right thing to do.
• Obnoxious Entitled Housewife: She was used to the upper-class life of her childhood and resented giving up her life to marry Butterscotch. She took out her bitterness on everybody around her, her son most of all, condescending anybody she deemed lower-class and forcing her son to perform at her dinner parties just to keep up her good reputation. She was also quite culturally insensitive, referring to 1980's Hollywood as "full of AIDS" and telling everybody at her supper club that her friend's son "is a gay."
  Beatrice: The man sitting next to me was wearing a t-shirt, a t-shirt, BoJack! In the theater! […] The T-shirt told me to "just do it." I don't know to what "it" the T-shirt referred but I will not be spoken to in that tone by an article of clothing.!
• Offing the Offspring: According to BoJack in "Fish Out Of Water", she tried to drown him in the bathtub when he was 22. Why she attempted to do it is never revealed but knowing Beatrice, nothing her son does is out of the table.
• Ojou: Respected, refined, sharp as a tack and top bachelorette due to her high status.
• Ojou Ringlets: The ringlets in the sides of her mane add to her aristocratic status. More so when she was younger and the Sugarman Sugar company actually had money and not just prestige.
• Old Money: Her family line had always been wealthy, having founded a successful sugar company.
• One-Night-Stand Pregnancy: BoJack was conceived when Beatrice had a one night stand with Butterscotch outside her debutante ball. She had to work to track Butterscotch down afterwards because the number he gave her was actually for a pizza parlor in Brownsburg.
• Parents as People: There are shreds of humanity spread all over Beatrice Horseman, buried in resentment and snobbery. When talking to him in the present, there's a sense of guilt and regret over the way she treated BoJack and the way she and Butterscotch made him and each other miserable.
• Parents Know Their Children: A dark version of the trope. When BoJack is stuck in limbo during Secretariat's shoot, Beatrice calls him and half-heartedly apologizes before admitting to him that the rot he might be trying to root out himself might be hereditary, which she regrets passing down to him. Likewise, she, through a ruthless Sherlock Scan, pinpoints BoJack's ambivalence toward his redemption and simply states he's broken, he can't do a lot to improve in that camp and she knows it because she raised him herself to be that way.
• Passive-Aggressive Kombat: Her marriage and motherhood was full of passive-aggressive snark.
• Perpetual Frowner: Her default expression, mainly after BoJack was born, is a frown. She's too wrapped up in grudges, narcissism and her own unhappiness to even consider a fake smile, not even for a family picture. She's that unhappy.
• Pet the Dog:
  • When she's talking to Henrietta and convincing her to not have the child, it's practically the only time we ever see her show any kind of empathy or warmth towards someone else as an adult, with her imploring the girl not to make the same mistake she did and even offering to pay for her education as long as she gives up the baby.
  • Even if it's somewhat twisted, Beatrice is quite nice to Hollyhock once she meets her. This is notable, since she's basically the bastard daughter of her husband and her maid, so being who she is, one would think she'd be furious. But she treats her well and never once blames her for her parents' actions, showing at least some awareness and desire to make it right. Of course, this is accompanied with some Kick the Morality Pet moments. Just look above.
  • When she's stricken with severe dementia and doesn't recognize BoJack anymore, we see that she actually did enjoy watching Horsin' Around and bragged to the others in the nursing home that her son was the star, but she never admitted this to BoJack willingly because it was a "dumb show" that starred her perceived disappointment of a son, so she decided she wasn't allowed to show enjoyment for it.
• Pitbull Dates Puppy: Her tentative courtship by Corbin Creamerman initially fails because Corbin is way too meek and shy for the spirited, strong-willed and stubborn Beatrice. Only when he starts showing some initiative and vision for Creamerman Ice Cream does Beatrice starts seeing him differently.
• Playing the Victim Card: She'd rather think of herself as a good, self-sacrificing mother who raised an ungrateful little brat turned a disappointment of a son. It never occurs to her that BoJack has every right not to give her any appreciation or that she's the one who tortured him during his childhood. Nope, he's the one to blame, he only takes, takes and takes!
• The Power of Hate: Beatrice eventually gave in to her inner darkness and pent up frustrations in life. If she couldn't be happy, she'd be sure everyone would share her misery.
• Predecessor Villain: To her son BoJack's Anti-Hero. Beatrice is pretty much why he's so screwed up and in many ways, she's a much worse horse than he'll ever be.
• Princess in Rags: Unaccustomed as she was to working class living conditions, Beatrice's pride worsened after having to rely on Butterscotch for income both because she didn't have the excessive energy needed to face the time period's discrimination toward working women and mothers (it still happens but the The '70s was more open about it, after all), being let down by Butterscotch's failure as a writer and refusing a cushy office job for her father (even comparing it to slavery), and because being an Idle Rich, she had probably never worked in her life for money. Whenever she would encounter old friends at the club, she'd pretend to still be one of them despite her poor status. The resentment at having to rely on a working-class horse as well as her crushed expectations and separation from her lavished upbringing produced a hatred of him and BoJack. Butterscotch does eventually agree to get the cushy office job for Bea's father, and she uses this (as seen in a montage) to remodel the living room, hire maids, and buy a nicer outfit.
• Proud Beauty: She was somewhat of an Indifferent Beauty in her youth albeit with body image issues and did not become this trope until after she believed her pregnancy “ruined her”. As a reference, how much she took notice of her appearance was always directly tied to how good she was doing in life: the less she was succeeding in the latter department, the more she'd focus on the former.
• Psychotic Smirk: Gives a cruel one as she brags to BoJack about drugging Hollyhock with her weight loss pills.
• Purple Is Powerful: In her appearances after BoJack is born, she wears a lot of purple, which calls back to her regal upbringing.
• Rebellious Princess: As a young woman, Beatrice desired to break free from her lavish lifestyle.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Gives BoJack a sharp one indeed in "Brand New Couch" when he's in a particularly bad place. She was the one who called him in the first place, mind you.
  I don't wanna fight you, BoJack. I just wanted to tell you I know. I know you wanna be happy, but you won't be, and—-I'm sorry.[...] It's not just you, you know. Your father and I, we— Well, you come by it honestly, the ugliness inside you. You were born broken, that's your birthright. And now you can fill your life with projects, your books and your movies and your little girlfriends but it won't make you whole. You're BoJack Horseman. There's no cure for that.
• Resentful Guardian: She hates her son BoJack for ruining her figure and her life, along with being in a loveless marriage.
• Rich Bitch:
  • First implied in Diane's book in "Downer Ending". She wrote that Beatrice was the heiress to the Sugarman Sugar Cubes fortune, and was "used to certain comforts".
  • Later played with — she grew up a rich socialite, but got the bulk of her bitchiness after she married the considerably less wealthy Butterscotch, unused to middle-class life. Her mean attitude continued when Butterscotch accepted the cushy office job that improved their fortunes.
• Rich Kid Turned Social Activist: Subverted. She returned from college a liberal who expressed frustration with her rich upbringing and decried wealth inequality, along with following the civil rights movement. However, instead of being genuine, Beatrice's struggles are presented as an attempt to rebel against the misogyny and vapid lifestyle of her peers without any real substance beyond what she thinks it involves. Once she gets a taste of the real commoner's life, she finds herself unable to cope with the lack of luxuries and becomes bitter, resentful and the kind of dissatisfied elitist she despised in the first place, along with becoming more conservative in terms of how she viewed minorities.
• Scatterbrained Senior: She's succumbed to dementia as of Season 4, meaning she no longer recognizes BoJack and frequently gets past and present events mixed up. Worth noting is the fact that, unlike a lot of the characters in Western Animation who fall under this trope in some way, Beatrice's dementia is not played for laughs. Episode 11 of season 4 (Time's Arrow) is told (almost) entirely from her confused perspective, and it's pure Nightmare Fuel.
• Second Episode Introduction: She's introduced properly along with her husband Butterscotch in a flashback in "BoJack Hates The Troops".
• Shadow Archetype: To an extent, she has all the traits BoJack hates about himself - both are petty, abrasive, miserable, bitter, sarcastic and poisonous. However, unlike Beatrice, BoJack does admit his failures and does his best to be a better person, while Beatrice more or less succumbed to her miserable existence.
• Simultaneous Arcs: With her son BoJack in season 4. Short synopsis; BoJack ascends, Beatrice descends.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Zigzagged. Beatrice resented how she was raised simply to have a husband and was initially disappointed by her suitor Corbin Creamerman's appearance and meek disposition; she was instead attracted to Butterscotch's rebellious attitude and revolutionary ideas. An unhappy marriage to Butterscotch later, Beatrice's broken mind wonders if marriage to the kind and sensitive Corbin would have been so bad.
• Smoking Is Cool: As a younger, more idealistic mare, she is shown smoking at one point at her debutante, but because of her more sympathetic attitude and her insufferable situation, it's not portrayed as a bad thing, along with the fact the time period encouraged it especially with women.
• Socialite: Was this before getting pregnant with BoJack and running off with Butterscotch. She was the daughter of a wealthy sugar salesman and grew up in a luxurious household. Even after she, to her great regret, left this lifestyle, she was still very concerned with public appearances, a regular attendant of high-brow parties, including a supper club, and haughty as her standard temper.
• Speak Ill of the Dead: BoJack gives a eulogy that acknowledges his mother was never a good parent, and he's going to have to live with her mistakes and the trauma she passed.
• Stage Mom: She raised BoJack as a performer so that, in her mind, he can make up for ruining her life. Even after he finds success as a sitcom actor she derides him as a "clown".
• Start of Darkness: "Time's Arrow" reveals that she was a bit jaded and sharp-tongued as a young woman (due to her childhood trauma), but overall still good and idealistic. She was also a happy bride with Butterscotch and new mother to BoJack until the hard work of caring for an eternally crying baby in an economic class lower than she was used to shattered her outlook. When Butterscotch scathingly reminded her, "You wanted this baby, remember that," it drove her to want to blame anyone but herself for the nightmare she trapped herself in. Needless to say, the seeds of cruelty and resentment that later engulfed Beatrice's entire personality and parenting to BoJack started that night.
• Strong Family Resemblance: She shares the gap in her front teeth and curled hair with her mother, Honey, and the diamond pattern with her father, Joseph.
• Tampering with Food and Drink: Is revealed to have been spiking Hollyhock's coffee with amphetamine pills to make her lose weight. When BoJack finds out, he takes her to live at a horrible Bleak Abyss Retirement Home.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Thanks to her hard life, Beatrice went from a cheerful and sweet little girl, to sassy but still well-meaning young woman, and finally ended up as a miserable and abusive middle-aged woman.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Downplayed. Weirdly enough, her senile dementia in Season 4 has made her a much more friendly and pleasant person, at least compared to the mean old bitch she used to be. Though of course, this has nothing to do with a conscious effort to be a better person; but her old age has effectively destroyed most of her mind, memories and personality included, and she just can't even remember how to be an angry and hateful person anymore. This confuses her son to no end.
• A Tragedy of Impulsiveness: Beatrice only had the one-night stand with Butterscotch out of retaliation for the latter condescendingly bringing up Beatrice doing whatever her father wanted. Then, she got pregnant....
• Tragic Dream: All she ever wanted was to find happiness, put her skills and intelligence to use and to taste ice cream. If you have read this far, you know Beatrice never got any of these things.
• True Blue Femininity: As a young adult, before having BoJack, her regular outfit consisted of a pale blue sweater and light blue dress with white dots, and she also wore light blue eyeshadow.
• Troubled Abuser: She is an abusive mother to BoJack and sure, his childhood was horrible, but Beatrice's childhood wasn't any better.
• Undignified Death: Her refusal to go down easy results in her corpse being frozen in a permanent, grotesque rictus and her shoddy treatment of BoJack made him so ambivalent to her passing that he squanders his heartfelt eulogy on the wrong corpse.
• The Unfavorite: As the girl and spare of the Sugarman family, she was this as her parents connected with CrackerJack more. Deconstructed but not in the usual way. When CrackerJack was alive, this didn't affect the family dynamics. But CrackerJack's death meant that she was a poor substitute to her parents; her mother couldn't emotionally handle the loss of her favorite child and her father viewed her as an inadequate heir, not being worthy of running the company rather growing up to be skinny and pretty so she can find a husband and produce an heir.
• Uptown Girl: A wealthy heiress filly like Beatrice and a working class horse like Butterscotch end up married due to a surprise pregnancy. Needless to say, the difference of classes in their marriage took a toll on both.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Season 4 reveals that this was the case with her; she was a happy little girl in the 40's who watched her family fall apart following her brother's wartime death, culminating in her mother's breakdown, drunken endangerment of Beatrice in a car crash, and eventual lobotomy where Beatrice was told never to love anybody that much again. What little chance she had of recovering was crushed when her father callously burned her things in a fire, and implicitly threatened to lobotomize her just like her mother if she ever cried or showed too much emotion again.
• Unwanted Spouse: She and Butterscotch hated each other. The feeling is quite mutual.
• Vanity Is Feminine: While she's got enough baggage to pick from, it's partly the loss of her figure to childbirth what makes her particularly furious about BoJack not meeting her grand expectations.
• Vicariously Ambitious: Deconstructed. Beatrice's unreachable ambitions for her son and inability to express what she was truly expecting or give him some sort of approval and love has made BoJack perpetually unhappy and constantly reaching out for goals without any specific aim.
• Weight Woe: She was considered fat as a child and grew up with very high expectations for a woman's looks. This leads to her relying on “pretty pills” to help her stay thin as an adult and explains why she believes pregnancy ruined her body. She encourages this mentality to Hollyhock to the point of secretly drugging her with those supplements to the point of overdose.
• Where Were You Last Night?: Beatrice's jealousy would be often triggered by the knowledge that Butterscotch might be sleeping with someone else. She would often interrogate him about it in a rather aggressive manner.
• You Remind Me of X:
  • It's implied that part of the reason why her father Joseph can't stand her snarky attitude and non-compromis is because Beatrice reminds him too much of Honey pre-lobotomy.
  • Turned on its head later when Beatrice denies any possible attachment to BoJack because of his resemblance to Crackerjack, aside of her memory of how such maternal love destroyed her mother.
• You See, I'm Dying: By-proxy example. The only way BoJack is reluctantly convinced to take her in is her doctor telling him in gentle terms she'll croak soon.
• Your Days Are Numbered: Her doctor tells BoJack that due to suffering dementia, Beatrice doesn't have many years left, if at all. She passes away at the age of 80 less than a year later in October 2018, shortly before the events of "Free Churro".

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